Post-graduate course at Queen's College, Birmingham : two lectures on the general pathology of tubercle, with especial reference to the question of infection / by Gilbert Barling.

  • Barling, Harry Gilbert, 1855-1940.
Date:
[1891]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Post-graduate course at Queen's College, Birmingham : two lectures on the general pathology of tubercle, with especial reference to the question of infection / by Gilbert Barling. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    harm likely to arise from such a cause. being pointed out to the patients. It would also be a wise precaution to cremate the faeces in cases where the alimentary tract is involved, so that the bacilli from such cases may not be distributed on a sewage farm or in similar ways. It remains now only to say a few words on the relation of the term struma or scrofula to tuberculosis. Taking the terms struma and scrofula as being synonymous in the minds of those using them, I propose to employ the first only, to save confusion. Strumous, it is perfectly clear, is a term very often used to indicate a condition which is undoubtedly tubercular. For example, a so-called strumous gland in the neck is one which contains caseating tubercles, which contains bacilli, which is capable of giving another animal tuberculosis if inoculated into it. So it is with so-called strumous disease of the knee-joint, a tubercular disease either of bone or synovial membrane or both. Such conditions had better be referred to as tubercular; the term is fuller and more definite. Strumous is however used in a second sense, being commonly coupled with another word, and so we have the term strumous tendency. What is implied by this is that the subject of it is born with a natural weakness of tissue derived by inheritance from tuberculous ancestors, and that such an one is more vulnerable to the virus of tubercle than a healthy person. It is not possible to do otherwise at present than to accept this strumous tendency as having a real significance, derived from the fact that those subject to it have an unusual tendency to catarrhal inflammation of the mucous membranes, and probably of joints and glands, and that on to these simple inflammatory changes the tubercular inflammation may be grafted, the bacillus finding conditions suitable to its develop- ment. Congenital tuberculosis is, as far as is known, very rare in the human subject, though I am told it is not so rare in bovines. Printed by Hall Si English, No. 71. High Street, Birmingham.