CHAPTER LXXXII 

 NON-SPECIFIC PROTEIN THERAPY 



WILLIAM F. PETERSEN 



College of Medicine, University of Illinois 



Chicago, Illinois 



INTRODUCTION 



The therapeutic procedure to which the name "protein therapy" has been given 

 is of interest to both bacteriologists and immunologists. The immunologist must con- 

 cern himself with the underlying alterations in the organism when the antigen has 

 entered the body, with the non-specific alterations brought about thereby, with their 

 effects on immunological processes, and with the question how far his specific thera- 

 peutic results are masked by wholly non-specific phenomena. The bacteriologist is 

 interested in the sudden termination of an acute infection (a typhoid fever or a 

 puerperal sepsis) or the recovery from the ordinary chronic infections which in some 

 form or other play so large a role in human illness. 



In its original sense the term "protein therapy" was applied to certain therapeutic 

 procedures whereby a reaction was produced by the injection of protein substances — 

 bacterial suspensions, peptone, or milk. The method was empiric and of diverse 

 origins. One led from the clinical observation that in the treatment of gonococcus 

 infections large intravenous doses of gonococcus vaccine (which according to the 

 Wright theory would be contraindicated) were frequently followed by marked clinical 

 improvement.' Increased fever and accentuation of the presumptive "negative 

 phase" were actually of benefit. The observations of Ichikawa^ in Japan, and of 

 Dessy, Grapiolo, and Fossati,^ Penna, Kraus, and Cuenca,'' that typhoid fever might 

 be promptly cured following an intravenous injection of typhoid or other vaccine, 

 were without doubt the immediate cause of interest in protein therapy. Curiously 

 enough, typhoid fever, for reasons which we shall discuss later, is one of the few acute 

 infectious diseases in which we might anticipate therapeutic effects. 



Empiric origin in itself should impose no handicap to scientific interest, for to 

 empiricism we owe many of our most useful therapeutic procedures. The particular 

 clinical experience on which protein therapy was based goes back, indeed, to remotest 

 medical antiquity. Cautery, seton, fontanelle-blister and venesection are its ancient 

 counterparts. All are "alteratives"^ in the sense that they may alter the reaction of 



' Bruck, C, and Sommer A.: Miinch. vied. Wchr., 60, 1185. 1913. 



^Ichikawa, S.: Zeitschr.f. Imni., 23, 32. 1914-15. 



3 Dessy, S., Grapiolo, F. L., and Fossati, V.: Semana Medico, Buenos Aires, 21, 357. 1914. 



■t Penna, J., Kraus, R., and Cuenca, Bonorino: Jour. Conf. Soc. Stud. Am. de hig., 1, 815. 1916-17. 



5 Fundamentally the alteration consists in a lessening of the reaction of the tissue to the irritant. 

 The subject has been discussed in relation to protein therapy by Burmeister (Burmeister, J.: Zeilsclir. 

 f. kl. Med., 95, 237. 1922). 



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