The Willimantic Journal

THE KOCH LYMPH

Its Discoverer Reveals Its Component Parts-
Cultivated Bacilli in Glycerine.

Professor Koch has published an account of the composition of the lymph which goes by his name. After describing the preliminary experiments, Professor Koch continues:-

"The remedy which is used in the new treatment consists of a glycerine extract, derived from the pure cultivation of tubercle bacilli. Into the simple extract there naturally passes, from the tubercular bacilli, besides the effective substance, all the matter soluble in 50 per cent. of glycerine. Consequently it contains a certain quantity of mineral salts, coloring substances and other (unknown) extractive matter. The rest of these substances can be removed from it easily. The effective substance is insoluble in absolute alcohol. It can be precipitated by it, though not, indeed, in a pure condition, but still combined with the other extractive matter. The coloring matter may also be removed, rendering it possible to obtain from the extract a colorless, dry substance, containing the effective principle in a much more concentrated form than the original glycerine solution. For application in practical practice this purification of the glycerine extract offers no advantage, because the substance so eliminated are unessential for the human organism. The process of purification would make the cost of the remedy unnecessarily high.

Regarding the constitution of the more effective substance, only surmises may for the present be expressed. It appears to me to be derivative from albuminous bodies having a close affinity to them. It does not belong to the group of so-called tox albumens because it bears high temperature and in the dialyser goes easily and quickly through the membrane. The proportion of the substance in the extract, to all appearances is very small. It is estimated at fractions of 1 per cent., and if this is correct, we should have to do with a matter whose effect upon organisms attacked with tuberculosis goes far beyond what is known to us of the strongest drugs.

Regarding the manner in which the specific action of the remedy on tuberculosis tissue is to be represented, various hypotheses may naturally be put forward.

Without wishing to affirm that my views afford the best explanation I represent the process myself in the following manner:

The tubercle bacilli produced when growing in living tissues the same as in artificial cultivations, contain certain substances which variously and notably influence living elements in their vicinity. Among these is a substance which in a certain degree of concentration kills or so alters living protoplasm that it passes into a condition that Weigert describes as coagulation necrosis. In tissue thus become necrotic the bacillus finds such unfavorable conditions of nourishment that it can grow no more and sometimes dies. This explains the remarkable phenomenon that in organs newly attacked with tuberculosis, for instance in guinea pigs, the spleen and liver which are then covered with nodules, numbers of bacilli are found, whereas they are rare or wholly absent when the enormously enlarged spleen consists almost entirely of whitish substance in a condition of coagulation necrosis such as is often found in cases of natural death in tuberculous guinea pigs.

For the present, at least, it is impossible to explain the specific influence which the remedy in accurately defined doses exercises upon tuberculous tissue, and the possibility of increasing doses with such remarkable rapidity, and the remedial effects which have unquestionably been produced under not too favorable circumstances."