Upon the virulence of the bacillus of bovine and human tuberculosis for monkeys / by Allan Macfadyen, M.D. Edin. (From the laboratory of the Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine.).

  • Macfayden, Allan, 1860-1907
Date:
[1903?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Upon the virulence of the bacillus of bovine and human tuberculosis for monkeys / by Allan Macfadyen, M.D. Edin. (From the laboratory of the Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine.). Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    UPON THE VIRULENCE OF THE BACILLUS OF BOVINE AND HUMAN TUBERCU¬ LOSIS FOR MONKEYS. The experiments forming the subject of this note were undertaken with the view of ascertaining in how far the human and bovine strains of the tubeicle bacillus agree or differ as regards their infective properties for the monkey. The methods adopted were mainly feeding experiments, as the particular object of the investigation was to determine to what extent the digestive tract is capable of acting as a channel of systemic invasion for tubercle organisms derived either from cattle or from man. There is naturally an entire absence of direct experimental evidence with regard to the possible transmission of the bacillus of bovine tuberculosis to the human subject by means of articles of food. It was therefore considered that the experiments might furnish at the same time indirect evidence upon this important and debateable point. It is in young children that, generally speaking, such bacterial infective processes are liable to occur on account of the anatomical structure of the intestinal wall and its lymphatic system. A food tuberculosis is most likely to appear in children by the consumption of unsterilised dairy milk. One may, indeed, go so far as to say that as regards tuberculosis and its transmissibility through food channels the danger that may exist is peculiar to children at the period in which a milk diet predominates. The monkey is the species of animal in which results com¬ parable in character to those possibly occurring in man can be obtained. The animals that were employed were, with one exception, rhesus monkeys. The experiments were arranged to favour an infection and, at the same time, to reproduce, as far as was possible, the natural conditions as they occur in man. In the first instance the experiments were made upon young monkeys of an average age of from