282 
Editorial • 
be considered how rarely anybody may have taken the trouble to 
search out the exact post-mortem appearances of animals that 
died several weeks after the experiment for which they served. 
This much is indeed well known to physiologists, that rabbits 
in whom the sympathetic nerve in the neck was cut, usually 
perish five, Six, or eight weeks later; henceforth it will be of 
interest to investigate the cause of death in these animals, and it 
will be, so to speak, a test of our deduction, whether or not pul¬ 
monary tuberculosis will be found in a large number of the 
animals that have thus died. 
“ We justly hesitate, however, to draw still farther conclusions 
from our experiments .... Firmly as we dare to maintain our 
conception of the history ? of tuberbulosis by inoculation, or, as 
we may well say, 4 traumatic 9 tuberculosis, we desire to be as 
cautious for the present in our conclusions as to the 4 idiofdtliic 9 
tuberculosis, so to speak, of man. 
44 Just as little do we venture an -opinion^as to what is the active 
element in the inspissated, necrosed pus,—whelht^Jtds thejree^ 
highly refractive granules, or the shriveled pus cells, or perhaps 
a chemical substance held in solution; only, in view of the well- 
known, very different effects of the injection of fresh pus into the 
veins of dogs, we think we must lay particular stress upon the 
fact that it is necrosed [ 4 abgestorbener > —dead, decayed] pus. 
Moreover, we have in nowise got nearer to a solution of the 
question, so much discussed in these latter years, of the relation 
of tuberculosis proper to the so-called caseous pneumonia. I^is 
true, we have repeatedly found in the lungs of our Guinea-pigs, 
along with the tubercles, the presence of more or less extensive, 
dry and tough, yellowish-white hepatisations which presented 
not a little similarity to what in man is designated as cheesy 
pneumonia. We regard this question, however, as much too 
intricate to be settled thus casually by a few isolated experiments, 
as it is still in doubt, besides, if the lungs of rodents are the 
proper objects for this purpose. Finally, we do not venture the 
slightest attempt to explain, by means of the material thus far 
actually brought before us, the mechanism of the occurrence of 
tuberculosis and its extension over the organism.” 
' (j C-F ~ ^ $ 
