A History of Science-4 [94]
something directly antagonistic to the virus, and the hope that this something might be transferred with curative effect to the blood of an infected susceptible animal. Numerous experimenters all over the world made investigations along the line of this alluring possibility, the leaders perhaps being Drs. Behring and Kitasato, closely followed by Dr. Roux and his associates of the Pasteur Institute of Paris. Definite results were announced by Behring in 1892 regarding two important diseases--tetanus and diphtheria--but the method did not come into general notice until 1894, when Dr. Roux read an epoch-making paper on the subject at the Congress of Hygiene at Buda-Pesth.
In this paper Dr. Roux, after adverting to the labors of Behring, Ehrlich, Boer, Kossel, and Wasserman, described in detail the methods that had been developed at the Pasteur Institute for the development of the curative serum, to which Behring had given the since-familiar name antitoxine. The method consists, first, of the cultivation, for some months, of the diphtheria bacillus (called the Klebs-Loeffler bacillus, in honor of its discoverers) in an artificial bouillon, for the development of a powerful toxine capable of giving the disease in a virulent form.
This toxine, after certain details of mechanical treatment, is injected in small but increasing doses into the system of an animal, care being taken to graduate the amount so that the animal does not succumb to the disease. After a certain course of this treatment it is found that a portion of blood serum of the animal so treated will act in a curative way if injected into the blood of another animal, or a human patient, suffering with diphtheria. In other words, according to theory, an antitoxine has been developed in the system of the animal subjected to the progressive inoculations of the diphtheria toxine. In Dr. Roux's experience the animal best suited for the purpose is the horse, though almost any of the domesticated animals will serve the purpose.
But Dr. Roux's paper did not stop with the description of laboratory methods. It told also of the practical application of the serum to the treatment of numerous cases of diphtheria in the hospitals of Paris--applications that had met with a gratifying measure of success. He made it clear that a means had been found of coping successfully with what had been one of the most virulent and intractable of the diseases of childhood. Hence it was not strange that his paper made a sensation in all circles, medical and lay alike.
Physicians from all over the world flocked to Paris to learn the details of the open secret, and within a few months the new serum-therapy had an acknowledged standing with the medical profession everywhere. What it had accomplished was regarded as but an earnest of what the new method might accomplish presently when applied to the other infectious diseases.
Efforts at such applications were immediately begun in numberless directions--had, indeed, been under way in many a laboratory for some years before. It is too early yet to speak of the results in detail. But enough has been done to show that this method also is susceptible of the widest generalization. It is not easy at the present stage to sift that which is tentative from that which will be permanent; but so great an authority as Behring does not hesitate to affirm that today we possess, in addition to the diphtheria antitoxine, equally specific antitoxines of tetanus, cholera, typhus fever, pneumonia, and tuberculosis--a set of diseases which in the aggregate account for a startling proportion of the general death-rate. Then it is known that Dr. Yersin, with the collaboration of his former colleagues of the Pasteur Institute, has developed, and has used with success, an antitoxine from the microbe of the plague which recently ravaged China.
Dr. Calmette, another graduate of the Pasteur Institute, has extended the range of the serum-therapy to include the prevention and treatment of poisoning by venoms, and has developed an antitoxine that has already
In this paper Dr. Roux, after adverting to the labors of Behring, Ehrlich, Boer, Kossel, and Wasserman, described in detail the methods that had been developed at the Pasteur Institute for the development of the curative serum, to which Behring had given the since-familiar name antitoxine. The method consists, first, of the cultivation, for some months, of the diphtheria bacillus (called the Klebs-Loeffler bacillus, in honor of its discoverers) in an artificial bouillon, for the development of a powerful toxine capable of giving the disease in a virulent form.
This toxine, after certain details of mechanical treatment, is injected in small but increasing doses into the system of an animal, care being taken to graduate the amount so that the animal does not succumb to the disease. After a certain course of this treatment it is found that a portion of blood serum of the animal so treated will act in a curative way if injected into the blood of another animal, or a human patient, suffering with diphtheria. In other words, according to theory, an antitoxine has been developed in the system of the animal subjected to the progressive inoculations of the diphtheria toxine. In Dr. Roux's experience the animal best suited for the purpose is the horse, though almost any of the domesticated animals will serve the purpose.
But Dr. Roux's paper did not stop with the description of laboratory methods. It told also of the practical application of the serum to the treatment of numerous cases of diphtheria in the hospitals of Paris--applications that had met with a gratifying measure of success. He made it clear that a means had been found of coping successfully with what had been one of the most virulent and intractable of the diseases of childhood. Hence it was not strange that his paper made a sensation in all circles, medical and lay alike.
Physicians from all over the world flocked to Paris to learn the details of the open secret, and within a few months the new serum-therapy had an acknowledged standing with the medical profession everywhere. What it had accomplished was regarded as but an earnest of what the new method might accomplish presently when applied to the other infectious diseases.
Efforts at such applications were immediately begun in numberless directions--had, indeed, been under way in many a laboratory for some years before. It is too early yet to speak of the results in detail. But enough has been done to show that this method also is susceptible of the widest generalization. It is not easy at the present stage to sift that which is tentative from that which will be permanent; but so great an authority as Behring does not hesitate to affirm that today we possess, in addition to the diphtheria antitoxine, equally specific antitoxines of tetanus, cholera, typhus fever, pneumonia, and tuberculosis--a set of diseases which in the aggregate account for a startling proportion of the general death-rate. Then it is known that Dr. Yersin, with the collaboration of his former colleagues of the Pasteur Institute, has developed, and has used with success, an antitoxine from the microbe of the plague which recently ravaged China.
Dr. Calmette, another graduate of the Pasteur Institute, has extended the range of the serum-therapy to include the prevention and treatment of poisoning by venoms, and has developed an antitoxine that has already