ON SPECIFIC THERAPEUTICS. 93 



attainable cure. In this respect a publication 

 from the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine 

 is most interesting, as it demonstrates the 

 successful result of the employment of supple- 

 mentary doses of perchloride of mercury in 

 the atoxyl treatment of animals infected with 

 sleeping-sickness.* 



For man the combinatory treatment is of the 

 greatest importance for a further reason. The 

 complete sterilisation of the body, i.e., the total 

 destruction of every parasite, is often only to be 

 accomplished by the administration of doses 

 which come very close to the lethal dose. Such 

 a procedure directly endangering life may be 

 permissible in the animal experiment, but never 

 in man. One is, however, justified in hoping 

 that it might be possible to cure the disease 

 without endangering life by the simultaneous 

 administration of three, four or five substances, 

 chosen in such a manner that their actions are 

 concentrated on the parasites, whilst in the 

 organism of the vertebrate host they are dis- 

 tributed over several different organs. 



It is only natural that modern therapy which 



* The perchloride in these cases has only the effect of 

 an adjuvant, since it has been shown that its action on the 

 trypanosomes, if administered alone, is quite inadequate. 



