Arizona republican., 1896-02-07
CURE FOR CONSUMPTION It's Active Principle Car
 bOliC Acid. Dircovered by pr. Edson of
 New York. A Large Proportion of Cures Re- ported Among the Cases AL
 ready Treated.


 NEW YORK, Feb. 6.-Dr. Cyrus Ed son, who was at one time commissioner of the city and county of New York, and who has been for years one of the we'll known contributors to the leading magazines, will publish an article to- morrow in the Medical Record-the Lancet among the medical journals in the United States under the following title: "A Rational Treatment for Phthisis Pulmonalis, Together With Some Notes on a New Medical Solu- tion." Under this headline comes the description of discovery made by Dr. Edson, which, it is stated, may solve the hitherto unsolyed problem of the cure of tuberculosis.
 Of all the diseases which affiict the human race, tuberculosis, in one form or another, is the most fatal. Among the people of nations sufficiently civil ized to keep records of deaths with their cause, about one-third are charged to tuberculosis. The most common form of the disease is con- sumption and all men remember the sensation which followed the an- nouncement by Professor Koch that he hoped that he had discovered rem edy. But tuberculosis kills thousands of babies when it attacks the bowels and it causes many men to walk with crutches. The disease is protean in character; there is scarcely part of the body it may not invade, and it kills about one-third of all who die.
 In order to understand Dr. Edson's discovery it is necessary to remember that Pasteur and Koch discovered and established the fact that germ diseases had as their ultimate cause the pres ence in the body of minute organisms, called germs, microbes and the like. It was not long before the germs were cultivated, as it was called. That is, some germs from a diseased person were transferred to some bouillon Irish moss, or some substance on which they would grow; placed in machine where the temperature was maintained at that of the blood and there allowed to increase and multiply, which they did with amazing rapidity. These cul- tivated germs were identical with those in the diseased person, as was was proved not only by the experi- ments with guinea pigs, but by the fact that many of the scientific men study ing them have by accident Geen innoc- ulated with them and have died as the result.
 Having the cultivated colonies, the scientific men made many experiments. They found disinfectants would kill these germs They found, for exam pie, that iby mixture of one part of phenol or carbolic acid, to three thou sand parts of water floated over a col ony of germs and left there for twenty four hours, all those germs died. It naturally occurred to them that if car bolic acid would kill germs outside of the body, it would kill them inside; and the conclusion that if they could kill all the germs in the body, they could destroy the cause of the disease and thus cure the latter was apparent. The experiment was promptly tried. The result some of those in whom these injections were put, developed abscesses at the point of injection Far more, however, were poisoned by the acid and the idea had to be given up. It was too fascinating, though Declat of Paris made mixture of one of the acids to one hundred of water, and putting in little salt, continued the injections, getting from them a larger percentage of cures.
 Tn. ECdcon +, hic at T to this subject in the early part of 1895 and he began the study of carbolic acid. He found that Stadler, Merck, Brieger, Salkowski and other great chemists agreed in declaring pheno, was a normal constituent of the urine in man, the horse and the COW. As whatever is in the urine comes from the blood after it has been strained through the kidneys, this meant phe- nol or carbolic acid was always in the blood of man. Merck's figures were, | in the urine of healthy person, .004 grams of phenol to the litre; Salowskl declared that during disease this rose to 15575 grms per litre. In other words, nature herself increased the amount of carbolic acid in the blood over one thousand times as soon as a person became sick. Yet, all observers agree carbolic acid could not be in- jected into the blood without poison ous effects.
 In other words, Dr. Edson had the problem before him about as follows Here is a substance, known anti, septic, which will kill the cultivated germs; not only present in the blood at all times, but increased by nature during disease; which all men say can not be injected without poisoning the patient. Why?
 pr. Edson answered his own ques tion by saying, Because we have no