TUBERCULOSIS 123 



unless the child had been constantly exposed to an in- 

 dividual affected with advanced tuberculosis. It has 

 been noted also amongst the thousands of infaHts 

 placed out to board by the municipality of Paris that 

 tuberculosis is rarely responsible for death during the 

 first years of their life. 



EVIDENCE OF THE PRESENCE OF TUBERCLE BACILLI 

 IN HEALTHY INDIVIDUALS. Naegeli in 1900 reported 

 that he had autopsied over 500 adults dying of all types 

 of disease and found upon careful examination that 

 tubercle was found in 97 per cent, of these autopsies. 

 Many observations were made in the latter part of the 

 I9th century on the autopsies of children which con- 

 troverted the findings of Naegeli in adults. Loomis in 

 New York in 1890 reported the autopsies of a large 

 number of adults who had died as a result of traumatism 

 and found in practically every instance that tubercles 

 were present although the individual did not have the 

 disease known as tuberculosis. Loomis removed the 

 tubercles from the dead bodies of these healthy adults 

 and injected them into rabbits and this injection almost 

 invariably caused tuberculosis. So that prior to the 

 discovery of tuberculin by Koch, it had been surmised 

 if not generally accepted that the tubercle bacilli were 

 pretty generally present amongst all adults and that it 

 was extremely rare to find any evidence of the presence 

 of tubercle bacilli in infants. 



TUBERCULIN. Tuberculin, a product of the tubercle 

 bacilli, was discovered by Koch in 1894 and thought by 

 him to have great curative value. Tuberculin when 

 administered subcutaneously produces local, systemic, 



