34 
REVIEW OF THE WORK OF OTHERS UPON THE THERIMAL DEATH POINT 
OF THE TUBERCLE BACILLUS. 
The early work upon the thermal death point of the tubercle 
bacillus is clouded in the obscurity of meager data and insuffi- 
ciently controlled and imperfectly oriented experiments. 
Martiny 1882, concludes, from two experiments with fragments of 
lung of a tuberculous guinea pig, that with an exposure to a moist 
temperature of 80° C. the infectivity of tubercle bacilli is not lost. 
May,^ 1883, undertook to determine how long the milk of tuber- 
culous cows must be boiled to render it surely innocuous. He experi- 
mented with injections of material into the peritoneal cavity of 
guinea pigs. All the injections of cooked fluids, milk, etc., gave 
negative results. Most of the experiments with raw milk of tuber- 
culous cows also gave negative results; a few positive. He con- 
cludes that there is small danger of infection from raw milk, and 
none at all from cooked milk, for human beings. 
Sormani,'' 1884, is reported by He Man to have injected milk con- 
taining tubercle bacilli into guinea pigs after havmg heated it ten 
minutes at 70°, 80°, and 90° C., with the result that all the animals 
became tuberculous. Mlien, however, the milk was kept seething 
for five minutes, cooled, and injected, the animals remained sound. 
Schill and Fischer, 1884, studied the action of a temperature of 
100° C. upon tuberculous sputum. They found that 100° of dry 
temperature did not surely destroy the virulence of tuberculous 
sputum whether dry or moist. 
Voelsch^ concluded that boiling did not destro}^ the virulence ui 
tuberculous products from rabbits, serum cultures, or tuberculous 
sputum. His experiments were made upon rabbits, and it appears 
that he misinterpreted the lesions produced by dead tubercle bacilli. 
He went so far as to believe that boiling twice, while it attenuates, 
does not destroy the virulence of the tubercle bacillus. 
Yersin,t 1888, tested the thermal death point of tubercle bacilli 
“vdth spores and without spores.” The tubercle bacilli ^Svithout 
spores” were obtained from spleen pulp of a rabbit dead of the 
o Martin, Hippoh^e: Sur la transformation du tubercule ^Tai on infectieux en corps 
etranger inerte sous I’infliience de hantes temperatm'es et de reactifs divers. Rev. 
demed., vol. 2, 1882, p. 913-927. 
&May, F.; XJeber die Infectiositat der Milch peiisiichtiger Kuhe. Arch. f. Hyg., 
vol. 1, 1883, p. 121. 
cSormani: Annali universal! di med., vol. 269, 1884. 
d Schill and Fischer: Ueber die Desinfection des Ausmirfs der Phtisiker. Mittheil. 
a. d. k. Gesndh., vol. 2, 1884, p. 131. 
^Voelsch: Beitrage zur Frage nach der Tenacitat der Tuberkelbacillen. Ziegler & 
Nauwerk’s Beitrage zur path. Anat. u. Phys., vol. 2, 1887. 
/Yersin, A.: De Paction de quelques antiseptiques et de la chaleur sur le bacille 
de la tuberculose. Ann. de PInst. Pasteur, vol. 2, 1888, p. 60. 
