70 Dr. Andrew Trimble on 



impending doom, it blinded his eyes to his true condition and 

 gave him the false hope of betterment and life. And all that it 

 did in a manner so wholesale and sweeping that it killed annually 

 in the Empire more victims than we lost each year since the 

 greatest war in history began, and wounded twice as many people 

 as were wounded in warfare. To be specific, more than 60,000 

 people died annually in the United Kingdom, while it was com- 

 puted that there were at least seven actively tubercular subjects 

 to each one who died, or more than 400,000. The history of 

 tuberculosis was not a chapter in the history of medicine : it was 

 part and parcel of history itself. Though the recorded historical 

 observation and tabulation of symptoms began about the time of 

 Hippocrates, it was obvious that symptoms of tuberculosis must 

 have been observed long before, for there was no reason to doubt 

 that the bacillus showed its activities almost at the dawn of civiliza- 

 tion. Proceeding, the lecturer sketched the history of the study 

 tuberculosis in a most interesting manner, dwelling particularly 

 upon the work of Anenbrugger, Laennec, Jean Antoine Villemin, 

 Cohnheim, and Koch. The final discovery, by the last-named — 

 the cause of tuberclosis — said the lecturer, was not less epoch- 

 making, or less important to humanity, than was the discovery by 

 Columbus of America. Let them turn now to the tubercle 

 bacillus, and hear what he had to say for himself. He had called 

 him a scoundrel, but if he were a criminal being tried at the bar 

 of humanity, he would have a right to say what he could for 

 himself. If they gave him that opportunity, he fancied this was 

 something like what the bacillus would say in his defence : — 

 ' You have accused me of being the cause of much suffering, and 

 of innumerable deaths ; of having slain without pity the young 

 and the old from time immemorial. But I would remind you 

 that in that respect I have done no more than you yourselves — 

 the lords of creation — have been doing for the past four and a 

 half years. If I reproduce myself to the damage of my host, I 

 would like j'ou to remember that it was not I who put myself in 

 the position of doing this injury. I can neither walk, swim, nor 



