INVISIBLE GERMS

Evening Star, Issue 20486, 17 May 1930, Page 13

INVISIBLE GERMS

EPOCH-MAKING TUBERCULOSIS DISCOVERY Professor Albert Calmette, a director of the Pasteur Institute and a bacteriologist of world-wide fame, has just made a communication to the French Academy of Medicine of very unusual interest and importance. Twenty years ago Dr Fontes, of Rio de Janeiro, reported that he had discovered in cases of tuberculosis a germ or virus so minute that it passed through a porcelain filter and through the walls of the blood vessels of the placenta. For many years his discovery was doubted, but it was fully confirmed by Dr Vaudremer in 1923, and since that date Professor Calmette, M. Jy Valtis, and others have been investigating the nature of the filterable virus* with results summarised by Professor; Calmette in his communication. Professor Calmette and his cbllagqes have demonstrated the very remarkable fact that the invisible filterable virus is a stage in the development life of the tubercle bacillus. In its invisible filterable stage the germ does not cause tuberculosis, merely various diseases ofl the skin and various septicemic conditions; but it is capable of developing! into slender bacilli, and finally into the typical bicillus tuberculosis discovered by Koch. For a long time‘doctors have recogs nised diseases associated in some way with tuberculosis, and yet showing no tubercle bacillus, and the explanation of such anomalous diseases is now plain. The clinical value of the discovery of a pre-bacillary virus is considerable,' for it will render it possible to detect tuberculous tendencies before any bacillus can be found, and, thus will enable doctors to take measures to nip the disease in the bud. It also proves that a mother can infect an infant with, tuberculosis even before it is bom. „

Apart from clinical value, the covery is of biological interest/for iti shows that invisible entities are an earlier stage in the evolution of. bacilli, and gives some sort of support to the evolutionists who have suggested that the unicellular organisms known to-day were evolved from prior organisms more minute in eize and more simple in character.