63 



Dr, Howard Sinclair then read a Paper on 

 "SOME RECENT ADVANCES IN SCIENCE-MICRO- 

 ORGANISMS AND THEIR RELATION TO DISEASE." 



Dr. Sinclair said :— I had originally intended to take up the 

 discussion of some of the principal medical discoveries of the 

 century, but, finding the material at my command so great, and 

 the time allotted to me so small, I have decided to confine myself 

 to the subject which I have announced. 



Dr. Sinclair then went on to describe the history of the 

 discovery of micro-organisms, and the progress of science in the 

 study of such organisms in relation to disease. Upon the 

 subject of consumption he said: — The tubercle bacillus has been 

 a great deal talked about of late. I need scarcely tell you that 

 it is the bacillus without which consumption does not exist. 

 This bacillus is now regarded " as the centre around which all the 

 phenomena of consumption must revolve ; thus the causation 

 of consumption is the life -history and habits of the tubercle 

 bacillus, including the conditions most favourable or unfavourable 

 to its growth in the body, its symptoms, the effect it produces 

 upon the body, and its cure by the use of agents that will destroy 

 it or render the soil of its selection infertile for its growth."* The 

 discovery of this important fact was made some eight years ago 

 by Robert Koch, at that time a practitioner in Breslau, in 

 Silesia. It was by his long-continued experiments with staining 

 processes that he at last hit upon a successful method of staining 

 this tubercle bacillus, whilst the remaining bacteria and other 

 tissues remained unaffected. His discovery later on of the 

 bacillus of cholera (to make further investigations on which he 

 went to India) has made his name known in every scientific 

 circle in the globe ; and it is certainly an encouraging fact for 

 biologists that the man who had discovered the means of 



*Whittaker on Tuberculosis in Sajou's Annual ofthe Medical Sciences, Vol. i, p. i, 1889. 



