88 



fifteen years, performed the original experiments of 

 which his own are repetitions ; and neglects to state that 

 Cohnheim and Frankel found that while these experi- 

 ments succeeded admirably in the Berlin laboratory where 

 many animals had long been confined, no tuberculosis 

 occurred in a subsequent repetition in a private dwell- 

 ing. On the same principle, perhaps, he neglects to 

 state that for such reasons as these, such experiments as 

 his own were years ago abandoned to amateurs, while the 

 battle for infectiousness was fought and won in the eye, 

 the lung, and the intestine, as above stated. Perhaps Dr. 

 Formad will kindly explain how he came to deny the in- 

 fectiousness of tuberculosis merely on the strength of 

 these long since abandoned experiments, without a sol- 

 itary experiment, or even reference to an experiment, on 

 the eye, etc. 



Because in his experiments no tubercular matter was 

 "intentionally or knowingly" introduced, he maintains 

 that nothing could have entered ; that the disease is there- 

 fore not specific nor infectious. Surgeons, then, intention- 

 ally and consciously inoculate their patients with pyaemic, 

 diphtheritic, and erysipelatous material. It will not help 

 Dr. Formad to deny, as a New York microscopist in the 

 same dilemma has curiously done (MEDICAL RECORD, 

 March 3, p. 247), that pyaemia is infectious. For in the 

 National Board of Health Bulletin, Sup. No. 17, Formad 

 asserts and attempts to prove the infectiousness of diph- 

 theria, and says (p. 18) : "A case may begin as one of 

 sthenic pseudo-membranous croup, and end as one of 

 adynamic diphtheria with blood-poisoning ; and in cases 

 of this character, not infrequently, no exposure to conta- 

 gion is discoverable" 1 Perhaps he will explain why the 

 absence of intentional or conscious inoculation, even of 

 discoverable exposure to contagion, is perfectly com- 

 patible with the infectiousness of diphtheria, and yet 

 proves the non-infectiousness of tuberculosis. Formad 

 says (p. 2) : "I can positively prove that true tubercu- 



1 Italics mine. 



