TUBERCULO-INFECTION OF MAN. 
549 
In 1908 Koch was “ of the same opinion still. I was myself 
present at the sixth International Congress against Tuberculosis 
in Washington, D. C., during the discussions of the special com¬ 
mittee appointed to consider this matter. I have had the honor 
of reading a paper on this famous conference before the Ohio 
Society for Comparative Medicine at their meeting in Cincinnati, 
and have with me for distribution after this lecture an abstract 
of these historic liberations, taken from the records of the Con¬ 
gress. Koch therein still maintains his original position—again 
with stubbornness and against the arguments of his friends who 
in vain begged him to yield. The grounds for his insistence on 
his views together with a description of his ingenious reasoning 
are laid down in my pamphlet on the subject. 
Close investigation and study, however, reveals that his posi¬ 
tion is untenable. If we believe with von Behring that food 
transmission is an important path of invasion of the human or¬ 
ganism by the tubercle bacillus, in spite of the fact that the in¬ 
tegrity of the intestinal mucosa in a large majority of the cases is 
preserved, then it behooves us to show the possibility, nay the 
probability, of such a course of infection by studying the phy¬ 
siological mechanism by which the blood and lymph, including 
chyle, the circulating media of the body, perform their functions, 
for it is through them alone that such transmission of the germ 
of tuberculosis from the intestinal port of entry, which we are 
presupposing, could take place. 
I believe we shall find that this route through the stomach is 
quite as direct as the one through the lungs—if not more so. But, 
at this point, some one might object: “ Is not the gastric juice a 
good agent of disinfection, of destruction of the tubercle bacilli? ” 
I will ask in return: “ Does it always then, with dependable uni¬ 
formity and regularity, destroy the germs of typhoid fever?” 
We know that it does not! 
As Wladimirofif, in his beautiful lecture on the “ Biology of 
the Tubercle Bacillus,” delivered in Washington before the Anti- 
Tuberculosis Congress in 1908. well says: “The old-time belief 
that the gastric juice destroyed the bacilli in the stomach is very 
