The Campaign Against Microbes

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1909 Excerpt: ...swallowing the toxin. It would, however, be worth while to repeat these experiments, since within the last year or so attention has again been directed to the intestinal origin of infections. It is common knowledge that diphtheria is cured by antidiphtheritic serum, and that tetanus is prevented by antitetanic serum, both of which are extracted from the blood of horses, which have been rendered immune to the respective diseases. Antidiphtheritic serum is curative, antitetanic serum merely preventive; the terms cure and prevention, however, have no meaning except in relation to the clinical signs of the disease. Physiologically both serums have a preventive action. The premonitory symptoms of diphtheria are of sufficiently early occurrence and definite enough for the doctor to intervene before the disease becomes too far advanced; the sore throat, false membrane, fever, and bacteriological analysis, give warning of the commencing intoxication, but the serum merely prevents fresh complications, and is of no avail against diphtheritic paralysis after it has set in. In tetanus there are no premonitory symptoms; when stiffness of the jaws sets in, the poison has already completed its passage from the peripheral nerve-endings to the centres, and has become firmly united with the nerve-cells. In order to cure tetanus, we should need an agent capable of undoing this fixation or combination, and up to the present time there is no reason to believe that this is possible. Serum-therapy originated in 1890, from von Behring's experiments. Its discovery would not have been possible unless Roux had previously found out the secret of toxic diseases. Von Behring's first guide was the classical memoir by Roux and Yersin on diphtheria, and, by repeatin...