VACCINE THERAPY IN THEORY AND PRACTICE 60 1 



about 150,000 unprotected men, 1 in 40 took the disease, with 

 a ease-mortality of 25 per cent. That is, the risk of infection 

 was reduced by one-half, and if infected, the chance of death 

 was reduced from 1 in 4 to 1 in 6. 1 



Hitherto, as we have seen, vaccine treatment has been 

 almost wholly prophylactic, and to Wright belongs the dis- 

 tinction of having first exploited it in a scientific manner as 

 a curative measure. Wright first realised that every organism 

 which causes localised disease and is capable of pure cultivation 

 may be employed as a vaccine to cure the disease it causes. 

 He further showed that elaborate methods of attenuating 

 growth are unnecessary, and that the organisms have merely 

 to be grown on solid media, washed off in saline solution and 

 sterilised by heat, and he has introduced an accurate method 

 of standardisation. The result of this has been to introduce 

 vaccine therapy into every-day practice, so that it is possible 

 to bring against any bacterial infection a specific means of 

 attack, and the patient's natural powers of recovery can be 

 stimulated, and cure hastened. 



In 1902 Wright published his first experiments in curative 

 inoculation. These were made on some refractory cases of 

 staphylococcal infection which he had had under treatment 

 during the two previous years. In the same paper he suggested 

 the extension of the method to other organisms, and from that 

 time the work has gone forward, till at the present time it is 

 possible to prepare a vaccine for any infection of which the 

 organism can be found. 2 



It is difficult to overestimate the importance ot these 

 advances. Without specific methods of this kind the physician 

 is powerless to deal directly with any bacterial infection ; the 

 best that is open to him is to put his patient under the most 

 hygienic conditions, and leave him alone to establish his own 

 immunity if he can. Vaccine therapy, which offers a rational 

 means of producing immunity, may fairly be considered the 

 greatest advance in the treatment of disease since Lister 

 introduced antiseptic surgery. 



Exponents of therapeutic immunisation claim, then, that 

 their method is a rational and scientific attempt to deal with 

 bacterial infections. It is fair to inquire on what grounds, 



1 McCrae, article " Typhoid Fever, 3 ' Osier's System. 



2 Wright, Lancet, March 29, 1902. 



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