BY WILTON W. R. LOVE, M.B. 127 



back to this method of protection lies in the fact that the pro- 

 tection is usually short-lived, conferring immunity only for 

 a few weeks. This can be overcome by repeated injections, 

 which however interferes with its usefulness on account 

 of the inconvenience and expense of repeated injections. 

 At the Plague Hospital here some of the resident 

 medical officers were in the habit of keeping themselves 

 immunised by taking fortnightly injections of the plague 

 curative serum. Some of the sera may have both an immunis- 

 ing effect and a curative effect, although not having bactericidal 

 properties. The introduction of serum from immunised 

 animals as a method of treatment marks one of the most 

 important strides in preventive medicine, and we have good 

 reason to hope that as yet the method is only in its infancy. 

 The most efficacious of these antitoxins has been the anti- 

 diphtheritic serum derived from horses highly immunised with 

 cultures of living diphtheria bacilli, with which the name of 

 Behring must ever be conspicuously connected. The death-rate in 

 the Children's Hospital in Brisbane for example has been brought 

 down from 45 per cent, to 9 per cent., and it is belived that 

 every case may be saved if the treatment can be given sufficiently 

 early. After the disease has existed for several days or more, 

 in addition to the poisonous effect of the diphtheria toxin, 

 there is often the result of a mixed infection super-added, e.g., 

 broncho-pneumonia, septic sloughing of the throat, etc., due to 

 the presence of organisms other than the diphtheria bacilli which 

 may cause a fatal issue in spite of the diphtheritic toxin having 

 been neutralised by the serum. 



Another but less effectual anti-toxin is the anti-tetanic 

 serum — from the use of which undoubted recoveries have taken 

 place, both in human beings and horses — but as cases are not 

 usually recognised until the toxin has already attacked the 

 central nervous system, and as the ratio of anti-toxin necessary 

 to counteract the effect of the toxin increases enormously with 

 every few hours, the curative effect is far below that of 

 diphtheritic anti-toxin. Greater success would be expected 

 from immunising doses of tetanic anti-toxin in lacerated wounds 

 where the development of tetanus might bs expected. 



Anti-streptococcic serum has been used with success against 

 erysipelas, post-mortem wounds, puerperal fever, and in general 

 septic infection due to streptococci — but is powerless against 



