DEVELOPMENT IN NINETEENTH CENTURY 323 



mortality of hydrophobia by Pasteur's treatment, by Celli, of Rome, 

 has been only 5 %, since 1899, at which time the institute was built 

 and organized, and during these four years 2000 patients have 

 been treated with the serum. 



The value of serum therapy is shown by a reference to the work 

 of the lam.ented Walter Reed, of the United States Army, who 

 discovered a treatment for yellow fever, a disease which destroyed 

 over 80,000 persons in this country during the past century. To- 

 day this scourge has been wiped from the face of the earth. The 

 bubonic plague, the most frightful disease that could visit a coun- 

 try, created panics among the people in former years; but now, 

 owing to the efficacy of serum therapy, its entrance into this coun- 

 try creates only a passing comment. Even in New York the dis- 

 ease was observed at quarantine, and was stamped out imme- 

 diately. Thompson predicts before long that the bubonic plague, 

 which is now practically confined to the valley of the Euphrates, 

 will be annihilated from even that locality, as well as cholera from 

 the valley of the Ganges. Haffkine's serum for the treatment of 

 this bubonic plague reduced the susceptibility of those exposed 

 to the infection 75 %, and the mortality by 90%. 



Oilman Thompson says that "thirty years of bacteriology in 

 all of its applications have done more for mankind than all the 

 medical research that has preceded. In an estimate made by Alfred 

 Russell Wallace of 25 discoveries of world-wide importance made 

 during the nineteenth century, a fifth were contributed by medi- 

 cal science, and all but one of these were made during the last half 

 of the century. Two more have been greatly influenced by med- 

 ical science, viz., the theory of the antiquity of man and the doc- 

 trine of organic evolution. Yet we have not wholly emerged from 

 the shadows of the Middle Ages, for have we not still among us 

 those who fain would abolish such experiments as have made 

 possible discoveries like those of vaccine, antitoxin, and antihy- 

 drophobic inoculations, even as there are those in Persia who 

 would mob physicians seeking to check the spread of cholera ? " 



Tetanus is a surgical disease which baffled the skill of physicians 

 for centuries. Recently it has been treated with very encourag- 

 ing results by means of antitoxin. This method of serum therapy, 

 together with the application of antiseptic surgery, has yielded 

 results that offer a striking illustration of the onward march of 

 surgery. In olden times the mortality in tetanus, according to 

 Lambert was 80 % for acute cases, 40 % for chronic cases, and 60 % 

 as an average for all cases. The mortality in tetanus, treated by 

 antitoxin and by antiseptic surgery, was about 61 % for acute cases, 

 and 5 % for chronic cases, and 30 % for all cases. 



From these statistics it is evident that antitoxin has reduced 



