The biological basis of specific therapy / [by] Dr. Simon Flexner.

  • Flexner, Simon, 1863-1946.
Date:
1911
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The biological basis of specific therapy / [by] Dr. Simon Flexner. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    or dangerous relapses that occur in many of the para- sitic diseases — commonly in, for example, malaria, sleeping sickness, spirochetal infection, to mention only a few.* Finally, the so-called chronic carrier of infectious organisms, who is being recognized as a serious menace to the health of society and is sincerely to be pitied, is to be regarded often as the victim of this form of mutation among the micro-organisms, which at one time caused him to be ill, but to which he but not his fellows has become adapted. In the successful exploitation of specific therapeutic measures account must obviously be taken of the bio- logical conditions described, as well as others that may in time be discovered. Manifestly, therefore, the bringing of the parasitic causes of microbic diseases under the influence of curative agents will be more readily and certainly accomplished when they are widely disseminated throughout the body than when they are hidden away within an organ or in the interior of a serous cavity. Hitherto the most effective agents of specific treat- ment have been just those that operated against the generalized infections, of which examples are such drugs as quinine in its action against the malarial parasite and mercury in its effect on the spirochetal cause of lues. The same result is now being achieved by salvarsan, recently perfected by Ehrlich, in respect to its application to a number of spirochetal affections in man and the domestic animals ; while the control 01 • This parasitic mutation, or fastness, is more readily developed against serum immunity principles (antibodies) than against chemical agents of the nature of drugs, but once produced the latter effect is the more difficult to remove. Serum fastness may be overcome by the super- infection of an animal that has recovered from infection with the corre- sponding fast strain, through which reversion to the normal type may be accomplished ; while chemical mutation is overcome solely apparently through sexual conjugation of protozoal parasites in the body'of an appro- priate insect host (Ehrlich : Folia Serologica, 1911, p. 697).