174 
EDITORIAL. 
io times its volume of phenicated water at Each of these steps would be sufficient, 
alone, to destroy all the bacilli that the culture contained. The so-called danger is t len 
absolutely imaginary. . 
« 2 ± It has been said that tuberculin may not give any reaction in some tuberculous 
animals. . . . , 
« It is true. Some tuberculous animals do not react to tuberculin ! but, it is on y 
when the disease is in its last stage, when animals are truly phthisic. And, then, the 
symptoms of the disease are evident, the diagnosis is easy and tuberculin is no longer 
necessary to establish it. 
“ The objection falls of itself. 
“ 3 d. It has been said, more serious objection, that tuberculin can produce reaction m 
healthy animals. 
« This is a positive error. It is easy to understand it when one thinks that tuberculin 
denounces the presence of the most recent and of the smallest lesions ! Such being the 
uncontested fact, it can be said that if lesion, denounced by the tuberculin, has not been 
detected, it is because it has not been sufficiently looked for ; because the post mortem has 
been badly made. 
“ 4th It has also been said that some non-tubercular affections of the lung or other 
viscera , 'can give reaction with tuberculin like tuberculosis does. Another error ! Neither 
will actinomycosis, vermicular bronchitis, nor the echinococci, the flukes of the liver, to 
mention only the most frequent diseases, give rise to tuberculin reaction, if they exist a one ; 
but it can be easily appreciated that with these a very small tubercular lesion may have 
existed, that it might have been overlooked at a post mortem and yet that this was the 
cause of the reaction. * I 
“5th. Tuberculin has the serious objection that it accelerates the development of I 
tubercular lesions to such extent that an animal would soon become useless and valueless, 
while if it had not been tuberculined it might have rendered good service. 
“ The aggravation of tuberculous lesions under the influence of tuberculin is a common 
fact in man-it is exceptional in bovines. I have observed but 3 cases out of 3500 injec¬ 
tions that I made myself, and, besides, when it takes place it is always upon animals 
phthisic to the last degree and consequently useless. 
<« 6th Tuberculin facilitates the passage of the bacillus in milk , and in that way milking 
cows very slightly affected would become valueless after the injection. I can positively say 
that such is not the case, as I have studied this important side of the question for a long 
time I have had in my laboratory tuberculous milking cows, which at first I employed to 
test the activity of the various tuberculins prepared at Pasteur Institute ; some of these cows 
received 15 20, 30 injections in less than a year, and not only did they keep up 
reacting but their milk, non-virulent before the experiment, remained so all the time. 
Last year I systematically made an injection of tuberculin, every week for two months, m 
a cow of mine, far advanced with tuberculosis ; every week also I injected in the perito¬ 
neum of 4 guinea pigs, 10 c. c. of milk to every one ; none of the 32 pigs experimented 
upon has become tuberculous. 
« 7 th It has also been said that a first injection of tuberculin prevented tuberculous 
cows reacting with a second injection. That the fact takes place, I will not deny. _ But I 
can affirm that it is rare, surely in less than S% of the cases ; on the other side, it takes 
place only in animals slightly affected, having lesions of little importance, almost insigm- 
