244 "opsonin" production that favored "phagocytosis" as per 

 Metchnikoff's ideas — such had been the daily employ of 

 Wherry since student days. 



The clinical results achieved through vaccine therapy had 

 been variable. Some doctors held them "good"; others, useless. 

 These bacterial stocks had been made by boiling up the micro- 

 organisms as so much soup. Wherry asked if other methods 

 of preparation might not be better — perhaps the immunity 

 producing properties of the dead organisms had been unduly 

 changed by the way they were cooked. Could not they be 

 killed without this drastic chemical change? Could not 

 bacteria be "coagulated" by other process than that of heat, 

 as by treatment with an antiseptic like formaldehyde? 

 "From a study of the literature and from our own observa- 

 tions the treatment of bacterial antigens with formaldehyde 

 leads to their detoxication without affecting their antigenic 

 value," he wrote [69], He cited his laboratory experiences in 

 evidence. He had made immune to tropical dysentery ( Shiga's 

 bacillus) a large number of rabbits — through first injection 

 of the animals with such a formaldehyde-killed culture of the 

 bacilli. Thereafter he had given them lethal doses of the living 

 organism. With the exception of the underimmunized, all his 

 animals lived. 



Now he applied his ideas to the cause of typhoid fever, suc- 

 ceeding here, too, in producing an immunity in men without 

 the severe reactions common to the use of the commercially 

 prepared (heat-killed) varieties. 



His theology was presented as an address to Cincinnati's 

 Ophthalmological club in December [70]. While entitled: 

 The use of vaccines and dyes in controlling infections of the 

 eye, it was statement, really, of all he believed to lie behind 

 the universal drama of one life trying to live upon another. 

 What I quote is practically all the paper (it was one and a 

 quarter pages long!). Beginning with the facts which to his 

 mind underlay the establishment of infection, he said: 

 ... So far as the host is concerned, the body may be con- 

 sidered as a cylinder covered by skin and mucous membrane 

 which have natural defensive powers of a high order; but 

 also contain many weak points where parasites may estab- 

 lish themselves and, through adaptation, acquire the ability 



