koch’s tuberculosis conclusions. 
477 
scale. Considerable herds of cattle have been purchased for the 
purpose and they will be added to as the emergency requires. It 
is proper to correct two mistaken impressions which have grown 
out of my recent London address. 
“ First—I laid no claim either to priority or monopoly to any 
ideas therein propounded. I sought only to tell of my own pri¬ 
vate experiments, and was, in fact, glad of the opportunity given 
to mention my contemporaries in some of their experiments, 
among whom was one of America’s greatest medical authorities, 
Dr. Theobald Smith. 
u Second—I did not mean to recommend the abandonment 
of comprehensive and expensive systems of regulation, preven¬ 
tion and inspection that are now in operation. I simply said 
that it was injurious and unnecessary to go .further with such 
systems when we were justified in expecting that our long 
sought remedy was foun'd and almost within our reach. Why, 
then, should we rear higher structures which must inevitably 
fall to the ground ?” 
KOCH'S TUBERCULOSIS CONCLUSIONS. 
SPECIMEN COMMENTS OF THE MEDICAL AND 
agricultural PRESS. 
REVIEW BY THE “ NEW YORK MEDICAL JOURNAL.” 
Several years ago Robert Koch startled the world by an¬ 
nouncing that in tuberculin he had found practically a remedy 
for incipient tuberculous disease. At that time he had already 
achieved great distinction as a bacteriologist, and physicians 
everywhere, relying implicitly on his expressed convictions, 
vied with each other in obtaining and promptly employing the 
product, but it soon appeared evident that it was of no consid¬ 
erable curative efficiency save in the particular form of tuber¬ 
culous disease known as lupus. Enthusiasm did not rise so 
high over his more recent tuberculinum residuum (T. R.), and 
now we hear little about it. It is no wonder, then, in view of 
the virtual failure of tuberculin, that when, before the recent 
British Congress of Tuberculosis, Koch belittled the precau¬ 
tions generally taken at the present day against the spread of 
tuberculous disease from cattle to man, there was a very general 
dissent from his views. It will, we think, take more than a few 
experiments, coupled with rather sweeping deductions from 
common observation, to demonstrate to the medical profession 
