Bacteriological and clinical studies of the diarrheal diseases of infancy : with reference to the bacillus dysenteriæ (shiga) from the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research / edited by Simon Flexner and L. Emmett Holt.

Date:
1904
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Bacteriological and clinical studies of the diarrheal diseases of infancy : with reference to the bacillus dysenteriæ (shiga) from the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research / edited by Simon Flexner and L. Emmett Holt. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    Since the finer reactions tend to separate the two types of bacilli the question which presses for solution is whether the action of pro- tective immune serum is as distinct as the mannite, agglutination and bacteriolytic reactions. Upon the answer given to this question may depend the practicability of using therapeutically anti-dysenteric serum. Shiga's immune serum is polyvalent and prepared by injecting several strains of dysentery bacilli into the horse. Whether or not all the strains employed represent the Shiga type of bacillus is not known; for the differentiation now recognized was undiscovered when his serum was first made. Indeed, it is not stated whether more than one type of the bacillus occurs in Japan. Hence his serum is not adapted either to the study of bacteriolysis in the manner intro- duced by Gay or to the testing of a cross process of immunization such as is now to be described. At my request Dr. Gay made a careful and exact study of cross- immunization of guinea-pigs with the Shiga and Flexner-Harris types of bacilli and immune serums. Fortunately an unlimited quantity of serum was available as we had had several horses in process of immunization with the different types during a period of two years.* As the dysentery bacillus tends to diminish in virulence when culti- vated outside the body it is necessary that a standard of activity be established and maintained by frequent passage of cultures through guinea-pigs. By choosing animals of a fixed weight and the injec- tion of a determined quantity of active culture, death takes place regu- larly in from 18 to 24 hours. The suspensions of the bacilli were injected intraperitoneally, and when immune serum was employed it was introduced beneath the skin. The experiments on cross-immunization and infection proved to be very important in that they showed that the protective power of the serum is a factor which fails to proceed hand in hand with bacterioly- *It is proper in this place to acknowledge our indebtedness to the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research which promoted by money grants the study of immunization, and to the H. K. Mulford Company of Philadelphia which gener- ously provided the large number of horses used in the course of this study and the subsequent tests of the immune serum upon children. The H. K. Mulford Company also rendered us invaluable aid through their laboratory staff, and we wish to thank the gentlemen composing it, and especially Drs. Kinyoun and Lincoln, for their many courtesies and the ready and very able help which they rendered us. It was a great convenience later on, while conducting the tests upon children suffering from diarrhea, to have the immune serum provided us in sterile glass syringes for immediate use, which the H. K. Mulford Company sup- plied without cost.