Opsonins and their utility in practical medicine : an address read before the meeting of the Tunbridge Wells and neighbouring divisions of the British Medical Association / by Herbert French.

  • French, Herbert Stanley, 1875-1951.
Date:
1907
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: Opsonins and their utility in practical medicine : an address read before the meeting of the Tunbridge Wells and neighbouring divisions of the British Medical Association / by Herbert French. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    Vauious Opsonins. Each blood serum contains many different opsonins— one variety for each sort of microbe. For example, the opsonic index of a given serum may be estimated against tubercle bacilli, staphylococci, gonococci, streptococci, and so on, by incubation with these different organisms respectively, and it does not follow that the opsonic index of a given serum will be high to staphylococci because it happens to be high to tubercle bacilli, and so on. It is necessary to specify the particular organism against which the opsonic index is to be estimated in each individual case. Diagnostic Value of Opsonic Index (1). In the case of tubercle bacilli, the opsonic indices of a series of healthy individuals may vary from 0.8 to 1.2, or thereabouts, but in tuberculous patients the index may be as low as 0.3 or as high as 1.8, or even higher. The estimation, therefore, may be of considerable diagnostic value in cases where there is doubt as to whether the lesion is tuberculous or not. If the index is below 0.7 or above 1 3, the argument will be in favour of tubercle, the resisting power of the patient being low in the first case, high in the second. The Effects of Vaccines upon the Opsonic Index AND THE Principles op Vaccine Treatment IN Disease. It is known that living organisms, during their growth, produce waste products inimical to the organisms them- selves. Yeast is one of the simplest examples of this. Yeast lives upon grape sugar, decomposing it and pro- ducing alcohol; alcohol is inimical to yeast; when the percentage of alcohol in a fermenting sugar solution reaches a certain point, further fermentation ceases because the yeast can no longer grow. Microbes in culture media produce antibodies in a similar way. Ever since Koch’s earlier discoveries there have been repeated attempts to turn these facts to therapeutic account. Koch himself hoped to cure phthisis and other tuberculous lesions by injecting patients with extracts of tubercle bacilli. The results were bad, death often being even accelerated. The method of treatment fell into disrepute. It is now reviving, and with good results. The amount of tuberculin injected by Koch was far too large, and there was no method of checking its effects. It is owing to Wright’s investigations upon opsonic indices that we have now learned what quantity of tuberculin should be given, when it should be given, and when the dose should be repeated. Vaccine treatment, with or without estimations of the opsonic indices, is not a means of working absolute miracles, and it must not be supposed that all other forms of treatment at once become unnecessary. It is a method of very real benefit to many patients, but it is to be used in addition to, not in place of, other well-recognized procedures.