TUBERCLE BACILLUS • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Tubercle bacillus

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noun

Tubercle n.

A small knoblike prominence or excrescence, whether natural or morbid; as, a tubercle on a plant; a tubercle on a bone; the tubercles appearing on the body in leprosy.

(Med.) A small mass or aggregation of morbid matter; especially, the deposit which accompanies scrofula or phthisis. This is composed of a hard, grayish, or yellowish, translucent or opaque matter, which gradually softens, and excites suppuration in its vicinity. It is most frequently found in the lungs, causing consumption.

Tubercle bacillus (Med.), a minute vegetable organism (Mycobacterium tuberculosis, formerly Bacillus tuberculosis, and also called Koch's bacillus) discovered by Koch, a German physician, in the sputum of consumptive patients and in tuberculous tissue. It is the causative agent of tuberculosis.

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Etymology of 'Tubercle bacillus'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Tubercle bacillus" Quotes from Famous Books

... known to be due to the invasion of the cutaneous structures by the tubercle bacillus; in short, a tuberculosis of the skin. It is not infrequently observed in the strumous and debilitated. It is entirely independent ...

— Essentials of Diseases of the Skin • Henry Weightman Stelwagon

... Lungs—How to Keep it from Spreading. Tuberculosis of the lungs is the most dangerous of all forms, both because the lungs appear to have less power of resistance against the tubercle bacillus, and also because from the lung, the bacilli can readily be coughed up and blown into the air again, or spit onto the floor, to be breathed into the lungs of other people, and thus give them the disease. Two-thirds of all who die of tuberculosis die of the pulmonary, or lung, form of the ...

— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson

... had occurred, and where the evacuation had not decomposed, that he found more abundantly the kind of organism which had been seen so richly in the intestinal mucosa. He then proceeded to describe the characters of this bacterium. It is smaller than the tubercle bacillus, being only about half or at most two-thirds the size of the latter, but much more plump, thicker, and slightly curved. As a rule, the curve is no more than that of a comma (,) but sometimes it assumes a semicircular shape, and he has seen it forming a double curve like an S, these two variations ...

— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various

... now known to be due to the invasion of the cutaneous structures by the tubercle bacillus; in short, a tuberculosis of the skin. It is not infrequently observed in the strumous and debilitated. It is ...

— Essentials of Diseases of the Skin • Henry Weightman Stelwagon

... amount of "close-range" work is rapidly manufacturing myopic eyes; if bad ventilation, whether due to faulty construction or to faulty management, is preparing soil for the tubercle bacillus; if children with contagious diseases are not found and segregated; if desks are so ill adapted to children's sizes and physical needs that they are forming crooked spines; if too many children are crowded into one room; if lack of air and light is producing strained eyes and malnutrition; ...

— Civics and Health • William H. Allen