Serums, vaccines and toxins in treatment and diagnosis / by Wm. Cecil Bosanquet and John W.H. Eyre.

Date:
1909
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Serums, vaccines and toxins in treatment and diagnosis / by Wm. Cecil Bosanquet and John W.H. Eyre. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    SERUMS, VACCINES, AND TOXINES IN TREATMENT AND DIAGNOSIS CHAPTER I IMMUNITY AND RESISTANCE TO DISEASE Acquired resistance.—The problem of the nature of disease and of the manner in which living bodies resist and recover from its attacks, has exercised the minds of mankind since very early times, and the fundamental truth that in the case of certain diseases one attack protects against subsequent infection was long ago discovered. The first attempt to utilise this principle for prophylactic purposes was made in the East in the form of inoculation against small-pox, a mild infection being produced by inoculation with matter derived from a pustule, in order to ward off danger of subsequent infection. Shortly after the introduc- tion of this procedure into the West of Europe, Jenner's great discovery that vaccination with cow-pox was equally efficacious as a protection and practically free from risk, laid the foundation of our knowledge of therapeutic inocu- lation. It was only, however, after the discovery of the minute living agents which cause infective diseases had been rendered possible by improvements in optical science that further advance in this field was made. When bacteria were recognised as the cause of most infective diseases, and their mode of action by the secretion of poisons or toxines was ascertained, research into the mode of resistance to these invaders was stimulated; and from the time of B