/ 
192 JAMES LAW. 
table records show that I had a gratifying measure of success 
with three plagues five, four and three years respectively, be¬ 
fore the successful experiments of Salmon and Smith, on 
which they based their “ New Method.” I say this in no 
disparaging spirit, as no one is more ready than I to acknowl¬ 
edge the great work that Drs. Salmon and Smith are accom¬ 
plishing for the country. They can well afford to allow the 
justice of my claim to priority in this matter. 
OBSCURITIES AND DIFFICULTIES IN KOCH’S METHOD. 
While the basis of Koch’s fluid is the chemical products 
of the bacillus of tuberculosis, the use to which he puts it, of 
a curative rather than a prophylactic agent, introduces an 
element of difficulty. The tendency of tuberculosis is to 
death of the tubercle. The chemical poisons may therefore 
be looked upon as necrosing ptomaines. It would seem 
therefore as if its sole profit must result from the expediting 
of this process. In a lupus, or other superficial tuberculous 
product, this may prove curative, but in the case of a tuber¬ 
cle imbedded in the depth of a solid organ, it puzzles one to 
see how the dead mass is to be eliminated and a recovery 
secured without a general diffusion of the contained bacilli. 
Koch himself allows that the bacilli are not all killed. And now 
Virchow, on the strength of twenty-one post-mortem exam¬ 
inations of individuals treated by Koch’s method, asserts that 
it endangers the diffusion of the germ and the onset of a gen¬ 
eral tuberculosis. It now appears that some cases of lupus 
are refractory. Similarly it would seem as if the method 
would entail great risk in case of tuberculosis of the bowel. 
Here the resulting necrosis must endanger perforation of the 
intestine and septic peritonitis. 
But again tuberculosis can hardly be classed among non¬ 
recurring diseases. Though its subject acquires in time a 
partial tolerance of the poison, yet this does not forbid a con¬ 
tinuance of the tuberculous process for a long lifetime in man 
and beast alike. A temporarily dormant state of the disease 
does not hinder its breaking out anew in an acute-and gener¬ 
alized form under unwholesome conditions of life. How 
