296 specific Inflammations. 



tozoa which enter the female genital canal in coition only a single 

 one passes through the micropyle of tlie ovum, it cannot but be a 

 strange coincidence that just this very one should carry with it a 

 tubercle bacillus. ("Tubercle bacilli in the sperm are scarcely likely 

 to adhere to the spermatozoa but are more likely to remain in the 

 fluid.) And, too, if the fertilizing spermatozoon accompanied by 

 a bacillus should penetrate into an ovum the bacillus as it multiplied 

 would at once seriously interfere with the process of multiplication 

 of the copulated cells and quickly put an end to the embryonic 

 germ by coagulation necrosis. The assumption tliat tubercle bacilli 

 may somehow lie dormant in an ovum in course of embryonic de- 

 velopment, and later when the fcetus has been formed start to mul- 

 tiply, is without foundation and is in contradiction to all our knowl- 

 edge of the growth of vegetable microorganisms in the animal body. 

 [Mafucci's experiments in chicken eggs (Centralbl. f. Bakt. u. 

 Parasitcnk., 1889, p. 237.) are usually offered as contradicting this 

 contention. He inoculated eggs with tubercle bacilli and then in- 

 cubated them. Out of eighteen eggs he obtained one dead and 

 eight living chicks. He was unable to find tubercle bacilli in the 

 dead chick, and examining the unfertile and rotten eggs which 

 failed to hatch he was unable to be satisfied of any growth of the 

 tubercle bacilli in them. His chicks were at first apparently healthy, 

 but later died with well defined tuberculous lesions. That latency 

 of infections is possible in relation with embryonic development is 

 also indicated by the transmission of the psorosperms of pchrine, 

 pointed out by Pasteur, through the ova of silk worm moths to the 

 silk worms, which at first seem healthy but soon die from the dis- 

 ease.] 



Attempts to prove from genealogical tables and statistics that 

 there is a true hereditary transmission of tuberculosis from parents 

 to offspring must always meet with the objection that children or 

 calves may be born free from the disease and may acquire the tuber- 

 culosis in the first years of tlieir lives from living in the presence of 

 their tuberculous parents. The above principal modes of trans- 

 mission of the tuberculous virus have been proved by great num- 

 bers of experiments. With human tuberculous sputum as well as 

 material obtained from tuberculous foci of the lungs, liver, lymph 

 nodes, intestine, etc., human or animal, and, too, with pure cultures 

 of tubercle bacilli, typical tuberculous disease can be caused either 

 by feeding, inhalation, or by subcutaneous, intraperitoneal or intra- 

 venous injection in all susceptible species of animals. There are, 

 however, certain differences, or rather dissimilarities, in pathogenic 



