292 specific Inflammations. 



The communicability of pulmonary consumption was suspected 

 even by the physicians of antiquity (Hippocrates, Isocrates) and 

 had obtained some credence among the laity. ]\Iore or less energetic 

 measures (burning of beds and linen used by consumptives, disinfec- 

 tion of furniture and dwellings by means of smoke, etc.) were 

 practiced as early as 1750 at Nancy, 1782 at Naples and about 

 the beginning of the nineteenth century were ordered and carried 

 out by authority of court, but were without result because of 

 their insufificiency to remove all the factors of infection. 



According to Nocard* phthisis is said to have been declared a 

 contagious disease in one of the Gothic laws. 



Under the influence of the erroneous teaching of Broussais that 

 phthisis arose spontaneously as a result of meteorological conditions, 

 social misery, etc., and the widely spread mistaken conception which 

 prevailed after the discovery of the tubercle bacillus to the effect 

 that this disease germ is omnipresent (ubiquitous), efforts toward 

 prophylaxis remained restricted. With the idea that predisposition 

 was the most important fault it w'as considered impossible to root out 

 the evil ; or it was held that the difficulties involved in the campaign 

 were insurmountable because of the impracticability of enforcing 

 the necessary rules of procedure. The old suspicion of the conta- 

 gious character of the disease received the first important confirma- 

 tion in the studies of Klencke (1843) ^"*^^ \'illemin (1865-1868), 

 the latter proving by a series of positive experiments the inocula- 

 bility of human tuberculosis and pearl disease of cattle into rabbits, 

 etc., and establishing the identity of animal and human tuberculosis. 

 Thereafter numerous investigators interested themselves in Ville- 

 min's teaching and repeatedly carried out similar experiments, some- 

 times confirming, sometimes opposing his results. (For details cf. 

 writings of Johne and Nocard.) With the discovery of the tubercule 

 bacillus by Robert Koch and the ingenious labors of this German 

 investigator, which have completely unraveled the aetiology of tuber- 

 culosis- of man and animals, all doubts as to the nature of the af- 

 fection disappeared. Koch succeeded in discovering and demon- 

 strating the tubercle bacillus by a special method of staining devised 

 by him ; and it is always possible by means of this method in case of 

 tuberculosis to recognize the tubercle bacillus in diseased parts and 

 material discharged from them both in man and in animals. This 

 microorganism presents itself as a rod-shaped microphvte, from two 

 to four micromillimeters in length and from three to five-tenths 



* E. Nocard, Lea Tuberculoses Animales; Encyclop^die Scientlflque des Aide 

 ^rt'moire. Paris : Masson. 



