116 MICROBES AND THE MICROBE-KILLER. 



cle the sole cause of consumption, and declared that if it 

 could once stamp out the tubercle bacillus consumption 

 would also be stamped out. 



Their theories sounded pretty enough aside from their 

 absurdity. Suddenly Dr. Koch electrified the world by 

 announcing that he had discovered a lymph, the inocu- 

 lation with which would cure consumption. Medical 

 science accepted the discovery without question. Medi- 

 cal colleges and hospitals sent their physicians to Berlin 

 to carefully investigate the matter, and the whole world 

 believed consumption would soon be as curable as mea- 

 sles or chicken-pox. 



Dr. Koch's lymph was simply an artificial propagation 

 of the consumption microbes outside the body. When 

 the patient was inoculated the process was simply to 

 inject a few more microbes into a system already teem- 

 ing with microbes. While the whole world was appa- 

 rently insane over the new alleged discovery, I — who had 

 never seen the action of the lymph upon a patient, but 

 v^ho believed that you might as well attempt to kill 

 weeds in a garden with weeds as to kill microbes in the 

 system with microbes — protested to the w^orld through 

 the newspapers that the lymph can never cure consump- 

 tion or any other disease. 



Had my advice been taken at first much misery and 

 suffering would have been avoided. How many people 

 died from the effects of the lymph, directly or indirectly, 

 will never be known. The whole affair was simply an 

 experiment indulged in by the whole world of medical 

 science, and failed because the investigators had disre- 

 garded Nature and proceeded upon a false basis. 



Until a few years ago consumption was believed to be 

 hereditary. As soon as the microbe theory was estab-^ 

 lished medical scientists declared that it was not heredi- 

 tary, but contagious. On that principle they urged the 

 isolation of consumptives and recommended every pre- 

 caution that might lead to an extermination of the 

 tubercle, which they thought is the apparent cause of the 

 disease. 



