1925 saw Wherry at the setting down of a philosophy of 24S 

 infection which, in a certain sense became his life's testa- 

 ment. It was founded upon the work of long years. Super- 

 ficially he was continuing addition to practical therapy; but 

 deeper down his "better clinical results" were the outgrowth 

 of reasoned argument about the whys and wherefores of 

 resistance to invasion by an enemy attacker. 



Four pages (!) on Gonorrheal ophthalmia treated with 

 acri flavin [68] started again as a case report. An infected eye, 

 proved to be of specific origin by Wherry's own methods of 

 culture, had resisted approved treatment for ten days, being 

 still swollen shut and filled with discharge. Wherry laid over 

 the eye, cloths saturated in strong salt water (a mixture of 

 ordinary salt with Epsom salts) and instilled a dye, acriflavin. 

 In three days the swelling had subsided, the eye was open and 

 the pus had almost disappeared. But since bacteria could still 

 be found microscopically, more intense and continuous instil- 

 lation of the acriflavin was resorted to. In two days all 

 discharge ceased and in a week the eye was well. 



To the world, it brought improved treatment of just 

 another patient. To Wherry, it was the clinical proof of 

 scientific deduction. He had taken the cause of the disease 

 into his laboratory, discovered there the conditions that made 

 it live best, the exact concentration of dye necessary to kill 

 it, and something of the circumstances which made it more 

 susceptible to this throttling. A culture medium simply too 

 dry would not raise his microorganism; so he had induced a 

 similar unfertility in the tissues of the eye by removing the 

 water by salting. He made this fact into a law by extending 

 the truth of his observations on gonorrhea to other life forms 

 — B pyocyaneus, B mucosus, B coli. "I have seen anthrax of 

 the eye in man cured in 24 hours, staphylococcus infection of 

 the eyelids, erysipelas and extremely edematous streptococcus 

 sore throats subside rapidly when the accompanying edema 

 was reduced" by "salt-wet dressings," he said. 



How to raise constitutional resistance to infection by the 

 injection of killed cultures of the organism had long, of course, 

 been his goal and that of many other workers in bacteriology. 

 All had injected "vaccines" to increase "immunity." Whether 

 by direct route or more indirectly through stimulation of 



