koch’s method with tcbercdlosis. 
75 
sis, and the analysis by the Viennese chemists greatly strength¬ 
ened this suspicion. 
Now, however, that surmise is changed to certainity, and 
that the active agent in Koch’s “lymph” is known to be 
chemical poison or poisons produced by the bacillus in 
vital processes, the question at once arises, have these pro¬ 
ducts ever before been used in medicine? To this the answer 
is emphatically, yes! The evidence of this I shall give below. 
Meanwhile let me say that nature herself displays this pro¬ 
cess in the great class of germ diseases in which the microbe 
—the living parasitic cause of the disease—does not live in 
the blood, but confines its attack to one circumscribed area, 
yet confers an immunity from the attacks of the disease upon 
the entire system. As instances of this may be adduced cow- 
pox and lung plague, and mild cases of local anthrax. All 
the modes of conferring immunity by inoculating weakened 
or partially devitalized virus, or single germs of the more 
potent virus, or small doses of virus into the blood, are in the 
main methods of availing of the same principle. The weak¬ 
ened germ and the single germ alike perish in the seat of 
inoculation, by reason of their inability to struggle success¬ 
fully with the more numerous and more potent tissue nuclei, 
and the migrating blood cells. The germs thrown into the 
circulating blood are, in the case of certain diseases like lung 
plague, similarly overcome and devoured by the myriads and 
myriads of actively moving blood globules, and thus fail to 
plant colonies in the tissues, and thereby start local disease. 
What, then, is it, which, permeating every tissue and enter¬ 
ing every cell and nucleus, confers upon the whole body a 
subsequent immunity from the attacks of the inoculated mi¬ 
crobe? Manifestly the chemical poisons, the products of the 
microbe’s life, to which these tissues and cells become habit¬ 
uated and insusceptible. Those who avail of these methods 
may not have recognized the full value of the chemical poison¬ 
ous products, in the absence of the living germs, hence they 
have not felt justified in leaving out the dangerous germ itself, 
yet their results are undoubtedly due to the soluble products 
which premeate every part of the system, and not directly to 
