2 4 o SCIENCE PROGRESS 



value in the treatment of rheumatism as regards alleviation of 

 pain and swelling, and the reduction of fever, it is unfortunately 

 not uncommon for a patient to develop some of the most serious 

 sequelae of acute rheumatism, such as endocarditis, pericarditis 

 or pleurisy, whilst fully under the influence of the drug. 



Surgery. — Another weapon which must be mentioned, if it 

 be only to do homage to the importance and extent of its work 

 and to the extraordinary skill which has been attained in its 

 use, is the surgeon's knife. With respect, however, to the 

 diseases under consideration, those of bacterial origin, it is 

 probable that recourse to its aid will be less frequent in the 

 future ; at any rate every effort will be made by rational and 

 scientific means to place the diseased body in a position to 

 exert its own resources against the invading micro-organisms, 

 and not until. these have failed will the knife be called into use. 

 Further, these means may be called upon with advantage to 

 act in conjunction with surgical procedures, and the latter may 

 often be helped by them to a happy result. 



Anti-bacterial substances in the blood. — The blood, then, con- 

 tains substances which are antagonistic to bacterial life ; that 

 this is so is now a matter of certainty. The body, that is to 

 say, is normally endowed with a certain amount of destructive 

 power against all micro-organisms ; and in immunisation (that 

 is, artificial increase in resistance to bacterial infection) more 

 of these substances are called into existence and conveyed into 

 the blood from the body tissues. The blood, therefore, may be 

 said to be strongly antiseptic, and it is only possible for the 

 most virulent types of bacteria to exist in it, and these rarely 

 in any numbers for any length of time. 



The study of the effect the blood exerts on bacteria has gone 

 on continuously throughout the bacteriological era, and it has 

 long been a matter of controversy whether the blood serum or 

 the white corpuscles are the agents in destroying invading 

 micro-organisms. 



A series of researches inaugurated by the well-known paper 

 by Nuttall 1 emanating from Fliigge's laboratory showed that 

 the blood serum could, by itself, kill certain bacteria. These 

 researches led to Buchner formulating his Alexic theory of 

 immunity, which attributes the protection of the body against 

 micro-organisms to the presence in the serum of certain chemical 



1 Leitschrift f. Hygiene, 1888. 



