FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



425 



use of ibis knowledge in devising new meth- 

 ods or niodifving old ones for the prevention 

 of communicable disease, and the extension 

 of it from person to person. In many mala- 

 dies the secretions of the mouth become high- 

 ly infected, and are a source of the most im- 

 mediate danger to any one coming in contact 

 with them. Dr. E. A. Wallace, in writing on 

 this subject, says : " At a recent meeting of 

 the Monroe County Medical Society, in Xew 

 York, an epidemic of diphtheria was reported 

 by one of the health officers. This epidemic 

 was confined to a single school district, twen 

 ty-four families being afflicted. The con- 

 tagion was traced back to the drinking cup 

 used in school by the diphtheritic children. 

 Microscopic examination revealed the diph- 

 theritic microbes adhering in great quanti- 

 ties to its rim." Dr. Alfred Ashmead says : 

 " The last time I knelt at the communion 

 altar there knelt at one side of me a patient 

 whom I knew (as I was treating him at the 

 time) to be suffering from an odious disease : 

 his mouth contained patches which made it 

 especially contagious. This person took the 

 cup before it came to me ; of course I let it 

 pass." (But what of the communicants be- 

 yond the doctor who did not know !) In 

 fact, there can be no reasonable doubt that 

 many cases of infectious disease have been 

 and are still caused by the communion cup, 

 and when one considers what some of them 

 are, how horrible the contraction of such a 

 disease is by any one, and how especially 

 pitiful in the case of a young girl, it is hard 

 to be patient with the stupid superstition 

 which upholds the continuance of such a 

 custom. There are so many paths by which 

 infection may reach us, and over which we 

 have, as yet, no control, that the few cases 

 in which we have some power should be made 

 the most of. 



Short Method for Prodacing Antitoxine, 



— ^An interesting paper, by Dr. G. E. Cart- 

 wright, was recently read before the Royal 

 Society on A Method for Rapidly Producing 

 Diphtheria Antitoxines. Two species of 

 diphtheria toxine were made use of — the 

 ordinary toxine produced by the organism in 

 peptone broth, and secondly the substances 

 present in serum-broth cultivations which 

 had been filtered and heated up to 65° C. 

 As a rule, the broth was inoculated with a 



virulent diphtheria culture some three or 

 four days previous to the addition of the se- 

 rum, and then incubated at a temperature of. 

 3*7° C. for at least three or four weeks. Be- 

 fore being used for injection it was subjected 

 to a temperature of 65° C. for about an hour, 

 and then filtered through a sterilized Cham- 

 berland candle to remove the bodies of the 

 bacilli. This fluid the author calls " serum" 

 toxine, in contradistinction to the ordinary 

 poison, "broth" toxine. The serum toxine 

 gives rise to little local irritation, but to 

 marked febrile reaction. In addition it was 

 found that animals which had been subjected 

 to its action were rendered more or less re- 

 fractory to subsequent infection, and this 

 suggested the possibility of its application as ' 

 a means of shortening the preliminary treat- 

 ment which a horse must undergo before it 

 can receive the large doses of broth toxine 

 which are usually necessary for the produc- 

 tion of antitoxine of any strength. A horse 

 was treated as follows : He i-eceived during 

 the first twelve days three hundred and 

 eighty cubic centimetres of serum toxine 

 spread over three injections on different 

 dates. On the nineteenth day fifty cubic 

 centimetres of unfiltered serum toxine (steril- 

 ized at 65° C.) and one hundred and fifty 

 cubic centimetres of broth toxine (of which 

 half a cubic centimetre killed a five-hundred- 

 gramme guinea-pig in forty-eight hours) 

 were injected. The experiment was some- 

 what impeded at this point by the formation 

 of a small abscess, which was subsequently 

 avoided by filtering out the bodies of the ba- 

 cilli. On the twenty-eighth day fifty cubic 

 centimetres of the same broth toxine were 

 injected, and on the thirtieth day another in- 

 jection of one hundred and fifteen cubic cen- 

 timetres was given. The horse was bled on 

 the thirty-second day of treatment, and the 

 serum was found to possess the strength of 

 ten normal units (one one-hundredth cubic 

 centimetre protected a two-hundred-and-fif ty- 

 gramme guinea-pig against ten lethal doses 

 of broth toxine). " As this strength is only 

 attained by Roux's method after at least ten 

 weeks' treatment, it was evident that the se- 

 rum treatment had considerably shortened the 

 process." The horse was then subjected to 

 the ordinary method for producing antitoxine, ' 

 when it reacted in every respect like an ani- 

 mal which had been under the usual treat- 



