VACCINATION AGAINST PLAGUE. 
By Ricuarp P. Strona. 
(From the Biological Laboratory, Bureau of Science.) 
Although the question of protective inoculation against plague has 
received considerable attention during the past few years and prophy- 
lacties for the disease have been recommended by Haffkine,’ the German 
Plague Commission * (Pfeiffer and Dieudonné), Lustig and Galeotti,’ 
Terni and Bandi,* Shiga, Besredka,® and Gosio,’ apparently no successful 
experiments have been made on human vaccination against the malady— 
i. e., protective inoculation in which the living attenuated pest bacillus has 
been employed.* It is true that in the eighteenth century some desultory 
attempts were made to secure immunity in man by exposing the individual 
to direct infection. In 1755 the Hungarian physician, Weszpremi, sug- 
gested the artificial inoculation of the pest poison in a manner similar to 
that which, at that time, was practiced against smallpox (variolation), 
hoping in this way to produce a mild form of the infection. In 1781, 
Samoilowitz, a Russian physician, inoculated himself with plague pus, 
suffered a mild attack of the disease, and so became immune. Therefore, 
he recommended that a lint compress previously saturated with the pus 
from a plague bubo be bound upon the arm of the person to be immunized. 
The skin of the individual was not to be abraded. Other observers 
attempted similar experiments; but many of these resulted disastrously ; 
thus, Cerutti performed such inoculations on six persons, five of whom 
died of plague. Because of these results this method of immunization 
obviously was soon abandoned and has not since been employed. Up 
‘British Medical Journal (1897), part 1, 1461. Also Lancet (1899), 1695. 
* Bericht der deutschen Pest Komission; Arb. a. d. Kais Ges. Amt. (1899), 
16, 306. 
* Deutsche med. Woch. (1897), 23, 227, 289. 
* Deutsche med. Woch. (1900), 26, 463. Also Rev. d. Hyg., Paris (1900), 
22, 62. 
° Bericht iiber die Pest in Kobe und Osaka, Tokyo (1900), 54. 
* Ann. Institut. Past. (1902) 16,918. Also Ibid, July (1905), 19, 479. 
* Ztschr. f. Hyg. (1905), 50, 519. 
*Kolle and Otto have called attention to the fact that the term “vaccine” is 
more correctly employed in the sense in which it was primarily used by Jenner 
and Pasteur, and should not be applied to forms of protective inoculation in 
which the killed organisms or their extracts are used. 
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