6 9 



of wood or paper, a linen thread, a cork, glass, pepper, 

 cantharides in short, after the induction of irritation and 

 inflammation in the subcutaneous tissue or peritoneum, 

 an eruption of miliary tubercles, indistinguishable his- 

 tologically from those following inoculation with tubercu- 

 lous matter, often occurred. It is a little strange, by the 

 way, that Dr. H. F. Formad, in a recent paper, called 

 "The Bacillus Tuberculosis," in which he relates the re- 

 petition of these experiments by himself and by one of his 

 own pupils, makes no allusion, direct or indirect, to this 

 work to which I have just referred. This is doubtless an 

 unintentional oversight ; yet in consequence of this over- 

 sight, the casual reader derives the impression that a fact 

 demonstrated by a score of observers in the last fifteen 

 years was discovered two years ago in Philadelphia. 



And then arose the school, represented among patholo- 

 gists by Buhl and Cohnheim, and among clinicians by 

 Niemeyer, who were inclined to deny altogether the spe- 

 cific nature of tuberculosis, who saw in the etiology of this 

 disease only the caseous degeneration of an inflammatory 

 product, a conception tersely expressed in the phrase no 

 cheesy product, no tuberculosis. Dr. Formad, after re- 

 peating these experiments, has recently arrived at the 

 same conclusion ; but, by a repetition of the singular over- 

 sight already mentioned, he conveys the impression, by 

 his failure to mention Niemeyer, Buhl, and the rest 

 (though citing one of his own pupils) that this doctrine 

 is new. 



Experimental investigation, however, revealed certain 

 facts that demolished the Cohnheim-Niemeyer theory 

 entirely, as admitted by Cohnheim himself. 



It had long been observed that wild animals, which in 

 their native state are not known to suffer from tubercu- 

 losis, are prone to the disease when kept in confinement ; 

 and that some tame animals, when closely confined, as is 

 usually the case in physiological laboratories, exhibit an 

 excessive mortality from this disease. Klebs suggested that 

 the successful induction of tuberculosis after the insertion 

 of glass, wood, etc., might after all be simply infection from 



