Tests Concerning Tubercle Bacilli in the Circulating Blood

Abstract

In this paper he recorded that he had made microscopic examinations of the blood of 125 tuberculous individuals, some of whom were affected with only incipient tuberculosis, and that he had found tubercle bacilli in the blood of every one of these individuals. In some cases only a few bacilli were seen, bur, to use his own words, "they were mostly in large numbers and clumps of 30 to 40 bacilli were not unusual, especially in cases of acute miliary tuberculosis." From his observations he formulated the conclusion,``I t appears that tuberculosis in all its forms is a bacteriemia.''The occurrence of isolated tuberculous lesions in the bodies of otherwise tuberculous as well as otherwise healthy individuals, located in regions remote from the various channels that communicate with the exterior, gives the belief that tubercle bacilli occasionally float in the blood stream the character of a fact that is hardly open to question.The same is true when we consider cases of more or less generalized tuberculosis with many lesions in widely separated portions of the body, and cases of miliary tuberculosis with innumerable lesions of approximately, if not precisely, the same age and stage of development. But such occasional presence of tubercle bacilli in the circulating blood is a very different condition from their constant occurrence in it in sufficient numbers to justify the classification of tuberculosis as a bacteriemia. Hence. Rosenberger's conclusion was received with considerable surprise and decided incredulity. Though the conclusion seems incredible, because it seems nearly impossible that a constant occurrence of tubercle bacilli in the blood of all tuberculous individuals could have been overlooked by the host of investigators who have studied tuberculosis with technic not greatly different from the one he used, we did not feel entitled to protest against it without offering some specific evidence to substantiate our protest.

Second annual meeting of the California Association of Medical Milk Commissions : at the University Farm, Davis, California, April 18, 1910

“…Experiment suggests that the capillaries of the lungs are more efficient in arresting bacilli than the peripheral capillaries. (8) Judging from two instances only, cattle affected with chronic tuberculosis seem much more resistant to acute tuberculosis from inoculation than one-tubercular cattle.…”