Justly has a vast excitement taken hold of all classes of the people, an excitement that has caused all other contemporary events to fall back. The search for an actual remedy for that exceedingly ravaging disease, tuberculosis, has at last been crowned with success, and even the most uneducated will be able to estimate the significance of this event.
We need but consider, that pulmonary consumption, the most frequent form of tuberculosis, annually demands over 30,000 victims in the cities of the German Empire over 15,000 inhabitants, and out of every 100 deceased 12–13 have fallen prey to this sickness.
The number of sufferers from pulmonary consumption can not nearly be determined, it certainly exceeds all other diseases by far. In the case of many people we can only infer from their appearance and hereditary tendencies, before visible signs can be discovered, that they will succumb to this terrible disease.
And this disease is now curable. Millions of people who have considered themselves doomed, will be given back to life; their regained strength will greatly increase the national wealth. In short, we look forward to an era, such as was not dreamt of even by the most vivid imagination only a few years back. But rather than be carried too far by our enthusiasm, let us study Koch's new method to cure, as far as we are now enabled to pass judgement on it.
First of all we must explain: What is tuberculosis? What relation does it bear to pulmonary consumption?
Pulmonary consumption is only one form of tuberculosis, by far the most frequent. This is the reason why pulmonary consumption, pulmonary tuberculosis, consumption and tuberculosis are used as synonymous terms.
Tuberculosis is the general expression. By that we understand a disease which is generated by a certain kind of organism belonging to the class of bacteria. These organisms are the tubercle bacilli, which were discovered by Koch in the year 1882.
Now these tubercle bacilli settle most frequently in the lungs and here cause serious derangements of the lung tissue. Pulmonary consumption is the result.
But the tubercle bacilli will also settle in any other portions of the body and cause tuberculosis.