INFECTION AND IMMUNITY 385 



been so gratifying that "Pasteur institutes" for its appli- 

 cation have been founded by governments or by large cities 

 in nearly all parts of the world. 



Another important application of this method of 

 preventing disease by the use of modified cultures of the 

 specific microorganisms of the disease has been made 

 with great success by a Russian bacteriologist named 

 Haffkine, for the prevention of cholera. In this case, 

 the specific organism, the "comma bacillus/' a spiral 

 organism, having long ago been discovered by Koch, 

 and being easily cultivable, the method of operating 

 was more simple and more closely resembled the vaccina- 

 tions against chicken cholera and anthrax. 



The success of Haffkine probably stimulated A. E. 

 Wright to attempt very much the same method in the 

 prophylaxis of typhoid fever. These two methods both 

 depend upon the employment of attenuated or killed 

 cultures for the production of sufficient active immunity 

 to enable the recipient to resist ordinary infection. 



The same thing was later tried by Haffkine for the 

 prevention of plague, and in all three of these diseases, 

 cholera, typhoid fever, and plague, trials made upon 

 large numbers of soldiers have shown most gratifying 

 results. 



A still further utilization of the principle has been 

 made by Wright in the "vaccine treatment" of many 

 of the infectious diseases. The fundamental idea being 

 that when the disease is of prolonged duration, or of 

 circumscribed invasiveness, the vaccination of the 

 patient with killed or attenuated cultures of the specific 

 organism brings about a sudden and acute reaction, 

 followed by an increase in the general resisting power 

 through improvement of the bacteria-destroying mechan- 

 ism by which the bacteria may be overcome. Excellent 

 results are claimed for this method in the treatment of 

 suppurating acne, furunculosis, certain localized forms 

 of tuberculosis, various chronic suppurating sinuses, etc. 



The nature of the resisting power thus induced is 



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