ARTIFICIAL PRODUCTION OF TUBERCLE. 3 



rabbit.' His results were submitted to a committee of the Society, who, after 

 examination, expressed their conviction that the disease thus produced was 

 similar to what is ordinarily received as tubercle in man. At that meeting, 

 and subsequently at the Croonian Lectures, Dr. Andrew Clark ^ made the 

 important statement, that he had succeeded in producing the same results 

 as could be obtained by the inoculation of tubercle by using other non- 

 tuberculous pathological products, but expressed some doubts whether the 

 disease so produced corresponded to tubercle in man; and Mr. Barwell also 

 stated tha,t he had observed what appeared to be tubercles in the lungs of 

 rabbits who had suffered from injuries to their bones. A little later in the 

 same year M. Villemin's researches were confirmed by Professor Hoffman 

 and M. Genondet ; and Dr. Marcet, in a paper read before the Royal Medical 

 and Chirurgical Society, proposed to use the sputa of patients as a means 

 of diagnosis of tubercular disease.^ 



These statements appeared to me to involve questions of the utmost 

 importance, and I determined to take an early opportunity to carry out a 

 series of experiments as to the effects of different morbid materials introduced 

 under the skin of rabbits and guinea-pigs in the same manner as M. Villemin 

 had conducted his inquiry with tubercle. 



I commenced my experiments in July 1867, but found, at the time 

 when I was beginning, that a distinguished Fellow of this College, Dr. 

 Sanderson, had shortly before instituted a series of experiments with the 

 same object. I did not know what was the precise line of his investigation. 

 The question also appeared to me to be involved in so much obscurity and 

 doubt, seeing that, with the exception of two cases of Dr. Andrew Clark, the 

 experiments hitherto made seemed to show that tubercle alone when inoculated 

 was capable of producing either tubercle or a disease resembling tubercle, — 

 a conclusion which must modify the whole of our views of the pathological 

 nature of this disease, — that I considered myself justified in continuing the 

 independent inquiry which I had marked out. 



It has proved that, within a few weeks of one another, perfectly inde- 

 pendent and without any knowledge of each other's results. Dr. Sanderson 

 and I have arrived at the same conclusion. A similar result has also been 

 recently obtained by Dr. Waldenburg.* Di". Sanderson and I have both 

 found that non-tubercular substances introduced under the skin of guinea-pigs 



1 Path. Soc. Trans., vol. xvii. * Allg. Medicin. Cent. Zeitung, Dec. 14, 1867. 



' Medical Times and Gazette, 1867, pp. 366, Dr. "Waldenburg's paper only came into my hands 



429. after my oyra experiments were completed. 

 * Med.-Chir. Trans., vol. L 



/ 



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