THE CAUSATION OF CONSUMPTION. 
[REPRINTED FROM THE ANNUAL REPORT OF THE MICHIGAN STATE BOARD OF HEALTH, 
FOR THE YEAR 1888, PAGE XXXIX; BEING AN EXTRACT FROM THE PROCEED- 
INGS OF THE BOARD AT ITS MEETING OCTOBER 11, 1887.] 
[Reprint No. 287.] 
A few years ago Dr. Eobert Koch of the Imperial Board of Health of 
Germany, through extensive researches and experiments discovered and 
demonstrated the cause of consumption to be a microscopic organism 
which has been named the bacillus tuberculosis. After much controversy, 
this now seems to be established. It is now acknowledged that inocula- 
tion with this organism in susceptible animals uniformly causes tubercu- 
losis. At this meeting of the State Board of Health, Dr. Baker exhibited 
diagrams which illustrated a paper he read recently before a section of the 
International Medical Congress, in Washington, D. C.,* in which he 
claims to prove that consumption is, to a considerable extent, controlled 
by conditions of the atmosphere, both the sickness and the deaths rising a 
certain time after the temperature falls, and falling after the temperature 
rises. He claims that small-pox, and sometimes scarlet fever, and perhaps 
other communicable diseases that enter the body through the lungs and 
air-passages do the same, and that he has worked out the reasons why. 
[They are stated, in connection with the tables and diagrams exhibiting 
the facts, in a paper entitled “The Causation of the Cold Weather Dis- 
eases,” printed on pages 197-211, of the Report of this Board for 1887.] 
Briefly, his explanation is that the breathing of cold air (which is always 
dry air,«because cold air cannot contain much moisture) dries the throat 
and air-passages, that this leaves in the throat and air-passages salts of the 
blood, which do not evaporate with the moisture; that the albuminous 
parts of the blood, which do not pass out of the blood-vessels under other 
* circumstances, do pass out whenever the salts accumulate greatly in the 
fluid which naturally moistens the throat and air-passages. Therefore, 
whenever a person has breathed unusually cold dry air until that fluid, 
because of its evaporation, contains much salt, the albuminous part of the 
blood comes out in the throat or lungs wherever the salty fluid is. When- 
over this exudation occurs there is then a chance for the bacillus tuber- 
culosis to lodge and multiply, because it is there kept in a nutritive solu- 
tion at the temperature of the body. (A similar explanation applies to 
small-pox.) Dr. Baker claims, therefore, that he has shown by statistics 
that these diseases are controlled; by the temperature and dryness of 
the atmosphere, and that he has pointed out the reasons why. Acknowl- 
edging that Dr. Koch has demonstrated that the bacillus tuberculosis is 
the cause of consumption whenever it gains entrance and lodgment in the 
body, Dr. Baker claims that he has himself discovered the cause of its 
gaining such lodgment,—in other words that his cause is “the cause that 
causes the cause” (which Dr. Koch discovered) to be effective in produc- 
ing the disease. 
* The paper, with its tables and illustrative diagrams, is new published on pages 52-78, section XVI 
vol. 5, of the Trans, of the International Medical Congress. Through the courtesy of the printers Win.’ 
F. Fell & Co., Philadelphia, one of the diagrams is printed herewith.—II. B. B., Seo.  JO- JZes///!/Ct e/////'e, Ct»d /fa/Aisis '/SO_J7 C/ic/c/i . 
Jbr ajberud 0/ SO tye&s'j, /f^{T-?#, /ties 
#f j6es~/n <Carldc>si/f 
JtJny/usicl, frvm jP/jth/sis, /i t/ie^wrrtf7e.S2ff?l£ 
i£ J&sTifierc&fius-#'. (_Tfte' /sMi/jes-TTTsJ/ 1 ci£rz/& /S 
~&ie fccf/es i frcreat+ses cr<P/ew/x>zzrz/s. ) 
"TC CX v ’ 1 1 d 5C! f V 
Uea/frs JIveT'cty#' J&mftera/iire 
Jlbci/T Z31CCC c/ea/As Arctri jP/if/l i SiS tree rr/i/YSS/Ued in' 
t/izs dittr/rc/ rsi/ cAa/&/cr~ tcAscA csrojecm cf Scottish Jlfc/, 
&>*>., AbuTtSer/cs Stfo ZZm, JHJV, JOV, MST, /mu/cj A AS S 63.