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

  • Flexner, Simon, 1863-1946.
Date:
1911
    ble to prepare a number of derivatives, far exceeding urotropin in activity, some of which have been applied to the treatment of experimental poliomyelitis, and with a hopeful measure of success. These new com- pounds, however, require to be injected into the spinal membranes and act best in conjunction with an im- mune serum.* This is obviously merely a beginning in the effort to accomplish the therapeutic control of this protean and highly serious disease, the natural history and significance of which are just beginning to be appreciated. But the outlook for its conquest is at the moment made hopeful through the utiliza- tion of the method of local specific treatment, by means of which the curative agents can be applied directly to the seat of the disease. ********* To have conquered pain through anesthesia, to have abolished wound infection by asepticism, to have accomplished already the prevention of some serious diseases and to have brought the prevention of others within measurable distance, to have learned that many of the organic diseases of past middle life originate in an infection and may thus be prevented, and to have established the guiding principles of the specific treatment of the infectious diseases, are some of the achievements in medical science during the sixty years that have elapsed since the historic demonstration of surgical anesthesia in this venerable institution. * The advantage to be secured against the parasites by employing more than one antagonistic agent results, first, from the circumstance that an antibody or drug will operate with greater effect against an already injured than against a normal parasite, and, second, because mutation in two directions is less readily effected than in one direction. Hence a fortunate combination of serum antibodies and a drug offers, theoretically, a favor- able means of overcoming an infecting micro-organism. Ehrlich (loc. cit.) recommends the simultaneous employment of two curative substances, one of which is especially chosen so as to injure the protoplasm, and the other the nuclei of the parasites.
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    Accession no. HC Author Flexner, Simon Biological basis of specific therapy Call no. ANESTHESIA XIXA6