Tuberculinum Koch

The old tuberculin of Koch

— A splendid article of Harlan Wells', entitled "A practical and favourable method of treating pulmonary tuberculosis with tuberculin," has appeared in the Journal of the American Institvjre of Homoeopathy, February, 1912. Wells employed the old tuberculin of Koch in hypodermic injection.

Wells always commenced the treatment with the 6th decimal dilution. If the patient was an adult, and if no reaction followed the first dose, he gave one-tenth of a cubic centimeter of the 5th decimal. He then increased the dose one-tenth cubic centimeter at each injection, until it reached the 3x dilution.

If a reaction followed, Wells waited that everything might be calm, and then resumed the dilution above the one that caused the reaction. Concerning the intervals between the injections, he generally gave two injections a week till the third week. It will take at least two or three months to judge if the treatment has proved of any permanent benefit. Wells cites many cases where the bacilli disappeared from the sputum.

He explains the favorable action of the tuberculin in about the usual manner, namely, that it stimulates the cells of the body, enabling them to form agglutinins, opsonins, and other substances related to the immunizing process. In a patient whose nutrition is poor, and who is functionally disordered, the organism is not in condition to respond to the stimulative action of tuberculin, consequently the tissue cells cannot form immunizing substances.

In the opinion of Moll, of Brixen, tuberculin is not only a specific for pulmonary tuberculosis but it is also a good remedy for bony suppurations, especially in cases that have been rebellious to other remedies. In these conditions we must employ only the high dilutions. The 60 th decimal gives prompt reactions. Moll cites many favourable cases in which he used the 250th decimal dilution.

Lambert makes frequent use of Tuberculinum 200th, one dose every week; the 30th generally producing aggravations (British Hom. Society). It has been remarked that homoeopaths speak as often of aggravations with the high dilutions as with the low.

Do not the phenomena of anaphylaxis occur more commonly as a result of small quantities ? Yet medicinal aggravations are less pronounced in hommopathic than in physiological doses, weak as the latter may be.

In a brochure entitled The Modern Treatment of Tuberculosis Barcelona, 1907, Olivey Gros states that he employs the tuberculin of Koch generally in the 200th, residual tuberculin in the 200th, dialyzed tuberculin in the 100th, the filtered bouillen of Denys in the 2000th, chloroformed tuberculin in the 100th, the serum of Marmorek in the 30th, the serum of Ferran in the 12th, and Aviaire in the 100th.