SCIENCE IN MEDICINE: 



BEING AN ACCOUNT OF SOME RECENT ADVANCES 

 IN THE TREATMENT OF DISEASE FOLLOWING 

 ON THE DISCOVERY OF OPSONINS 



By A. C. INMAN, M.A., M.B. (Oxon.) 



Introduction— Chemical Antiseptics — Surgery — The Anti-bacterial substances of 

 the blood — Bacteriolysins — Bactericidal substances — Agglutinins— Opsonins — 

 Practical Adaptation to Medicine — Passive Immunity — Serum-therapy — 

 Active Immunity — Inoculation of bacterial vaccines — The Vaccine — The 

 Opsonic Index — Classification of diseases in which vaccination is applicable : 

 I. Local— II. Local with general disturbances — Pulmonary Tuberculosis — 

 III. Septicaemias — Cancer — Difficulties of Inoculation — Reasons — Their treat- 

 ment — Sero-diagnosis— Conclusion. 



Medicine has always depended on science for advancement ; and 

 there are few branches of science to which it does not owe a 

 deep debt of gratitude. Without the microscope some of the 

 most potent causes of disease must have remained for ever 

 unknown ; as far back as 1680 it enabled Leeuwenhoek to 

 publish an exhaustive treatise on the organisms of putrefaction, 

 and two centuries later it was mainly owing to the high degree 

 of efficiency to which this instrument had been brought that 

 Pasteur was able to lay the foundations of modern bacterio- 

 logy. Since that date medicine has entered upon what has 

 been appropriately called the bacteriological era ; and this, 

 short though it has been, has already witnessed a complete 

 revolution in the treatment of the large class of diseases known 

 as bacterial infections. Moreover, it must be felt by most 

 observers that further advances will be made in this direction ; 

 that with improved methods and an increasing insight into 

 physiology and pathology, a still larger number of diseases will 

 be traced to a bacterial origin, and will receive a corresponding 

 and consequently a more effective treatment. 



It is the object of this paper to examine the recent advances 

 in our knowledge of the role played by the blood in bacterial 

 infections. Before doing this it will be well to make a brief 



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