Koch’s Consumption Cure

Evening Star, Issue 8364, 15 November 1890, Page 2 (Supplement)

Koch’s Consumption Cure

Dr Fred. Bird, of Melbourne, has had private letters from Professor H. B. Allen, of the Melbourne University, who is now in Berlin, and who has been afforded an opportunity of going over Dr Koch’s extensive laboratories. Professor Allen (says the ‘Argus’), in describing the work of the congress, made allusion to the paper on phthisis which Dr Koch read before the congress. The savant described a number of chemical substances which would destroy the banding, but which could not be injected in sufficient quantities to kill the germ without poisoning the whole organism, and went on to show that he bad at last found a substance which was fatal to the tubercular guest without injuring its living host. His experiments were carried out almost entirely upon animals, and especially guinea-pigs, which are particularly susceptible to tubercular disease. After inoculating a number of guinea pigs with the genuine tubercle of phthisis, some of them were not subjected to further treatment, while a special remedial substance was injected into the others. Dr Koch, with characteristic reticence, declined to divulge the exact preparation which he used as a prophylactic until he should have absolutely convinced himself of its efficacy ; and it is not clear at present whether the substance which he injected was the attenuated virus of tuberculosis or some distinct chemical agent. The analogy of similar experiments in other directions would seem to show that the attenuated virus would be used as a remedy ; but the line research adopted by Dr Koch in this case indicated that he had found some chemical compound which would do the work required. The result of the experiment was that all the guinea - pigs which had been treated with the remedial agent recovered, while the others died in a very short time of well-defined tubercular disease. Dr Kocb had not experimented upon any human subjects when the most recent advices were despatched, and it is considered impossible that the truth of such a startling theory can be established without a series of exhaustive teats. Dr Fred Bird points out that a difficulty in the way of the treatment would be found in the fact that phthisis has no regular stage of Incubation like the other diseases in which inoculation has been successfully practised. The satisfactory results which have been derived in such cases are based upon a knowledge of the exact stage which the disease has reached, and inoculation has been applied so that the remedial agent has time to outrun the course of the original complaint. Dr Koch is the discoverer of bacillus of cholera, and in making that discovery known to the world he exercised the same cautious reticence as he has shown in connection with his last and infinitely more important discovery. Daring bis researches he that, contrary to his expectations, the bacillus of phthisis was not very tenacious of life, and succumbed immediately to exposure to snnlight. Even ordinary daylight, too, was found to be fatal to it. Among the medical profession, the greatest interest is taken in Dr Koch’s work, and it is declared that if successful the system will be the greatest triumph that medical science has ever achieved.