Serums, vaccines and toxines in treatment and diagnosis.

  • Bosanquet, W. Cecil (William Cecil), 1866-1941.
Date:
1904
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Serums, vaccines and toxines in treatment and diagnosis. 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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    a specific antitoxic serum, protecting only against its appro- priate toxine.1 Similarly, in the case of snake-venom an antitoxic serum was prepared, of which use has been made therapeutically with some degree of success. Antibacterial Serum.—It may here be pointed out that in order to prepare an antitoxic serum it is necessary to obtain the toxine of the bacterium in question for the purpose of injection into animals. In the case of diphtheria and tetanus this was easily done. In the case of many other organisms, as previously mentioned, the poison is not secreted into culture-media, but remains in the bodies of the bacteria themselves. If the actual germs are injected into animals, beginning with minute doses of attenuated cultures and gradually increasing until large quantities of virulent bacteria can be tolerated, in most cases a serum is produced which is not antitoxic in the sense of neutralising the poisons of the micro-organism, but which destroys the bacteria themselves when they are sub- mitted to its action. Such a serum is said to be anti- bacterial or bactericidal, instead of antitoxic. Thus, if an animal is injected with cholera-vibrios until it is very resistant to these germs, and then a little of its blood-serum is added to a culture of these organisms, the latter are found to undergo degeneration, and finally to be completely dis- integrated ; but no quantity of this serum will neutralise a lethal-dose of the poison of the cholera-germ. On the other hand, an antitoxic serum has no effect in preventing the growth of the appropriate organism; for instance, diph- therial antitoxine is a very favourable culture-medium for the Klebs-Loeffler bacillus. The process of destruction of bacteria by an antibacterial serum is called bacteriolysis and the property resides not only in the blood-serum, but also in other vital fluids, such as the peritoneal exudate. It is 1 In the case of ricin and the allied vegetable substances, feeding animals on small, but gradually increasing, doses will produce im- munity ; but this is not the case with bacterial toxines, which are destroyed by digestion.