712 



SERO-THERAPY. 



fineness. Mexican dollars are current still, but 

 for less than their bullion value. 



There were 192 vessels, of 102.532 tons, entered 

 at the port of Santo Domingo in 1893; and in 

 the previous year 129, of 147,347 tons, at Puerto 

 Plata. The exports are coffee, mahogany, log- 

 wood, lignum vita% fustic, lancewood, cacao, 

 sugar, honey, tobacco, and hides. 



There is a railroad from Samana to La Vega, 

 71 miles, which is being extended to Santiago. 

 The telegraph between Puerto Plata and San- 

 to Domingo, 229 miles, with branches, connects 

 with the French submarine cable. The post 

 office in 1892 carried 323,662 internal and 205,- 

 075 international letters. 



Political Conspiracy. The disaffection 

 with the President broke out in open revolt a 

 few days after the execution of the Baez brothers, 

 in December, 1893. This insurrection was put 

 down after less than a fortnight's fighting. 

 Heureaux still dreaded his enemies, however, 

 and took every means to terrify them, causing 

 the arrest and imprisonment of several promi- 

 nent persons known to be hostile to him. He 

 had spies everywhere, and permitted no foreign- 

 ers to land without passports. During January 

 and February, 1894, a dozen persons were re- 

 ported to have been tried by court-martial and 

 executed. One of these was Francisco Pidtado, 

 whose brother, the Spanish consul, was uncere- 

 moniously banished. In July another plot to 

 assassinate the President was scented by the 

 secret agents, in consequence of which several 

 men were arrested and Gen. Bobadilla was shot 

 as the ringleader. The arrests led to another 

 disturbance in the capital, which was quelled 

 with the usual rigor. 



Quarrel with France. Before the last elec- 

 tion President Heureaux, wishing to pay arrears 

 of salary due the officials, contracted to borrow 

 200,000 francs from the Banque Dominicaine, a 

 French corporation, on the security of treasury 

 bonds at half their nominal value and at 15 per 

 cent, interest. M. Marcenas, the head of the bank, 

 who was a rival candidate for the presidency, 

 refused to advance the money without the se- 

 curity of the stamp duties, which were already 

 pledged elsewhere. Heureaux thereupon de- 

 manded the return of the bonds, having received 

 an offer of the money from another bank. He 

 appealed to the courts, which ordered the bank 

 either to advance the money or to return the 

 bonds. The bank disputed the impartiality of 

 this judgment, whereupon Gen. Heureaux affixed 

 the Government seals to the coffers of the bank. 

 The French consul then intervened, and placed 

 his seals over those of the Dominican Govern- 

 ment. These seals were removed by order of 

 the President. The French consul regarded 

 this act a violation of international law and 

 telegraphed to his Government, which sent 2 

 men-of-war to Dominican waters. Gen. Heu- 

 reaux offered to deposit 200,000 francs in any 

 other bank, but the proposition was not ac- 

 cepted, and diplomatic relations were broken off 



SERO-THERA PY. In the decade preceding 

 this bacteriology had developed a variety of ex- 

 periments for antagonizing microbes by other 

 microbes, or by their own kind, or by their auto- 

 toxic product attenuated, on the principle of vac- 

 cination for smallpox. Wanting success on this 



line the chief practical result of which is the 

 tuberculin test for consumption germs in cattle 

 the true direction of progress has been found 

 in the present decade in the cultivation and re- 

 enforcement of the blood as the true citadel of 

 life, in its perfection impregnable, as immemorial 

 experience and modern science unitedly testify, 

 to the assaults of infection, whether by microbes 

 or by their toxic products. Two general meth- 

 ods "of re-enforcing the blood against disease 

 have been found effectual to degrees so promis- 

 ing as to announce a new medical epoch of un- 

 precedented importance. Haematherapy, or 

 treatment by blood (practically the blo'od of 

 animals) is a comprehensive term for the system 

 in both of its methods, but has been limited by 

 usage to the application of robust animal blood, 

 in its ordinary activity, to the maladies that re- 

 sult from debilitation or exhaustion of the vital 

 fluid in man, such as anaemia, innutrition, debil- 

 ity, ulcers, and exsanguination from choleraic, 

 traumatic, or post-partum haemorrhage, but with- 

 out excluding from view the probable efficacy of 

 this natural, innocuous, and purely physiological 

 agent in all cases, except possibly where epidem- 

 ics of extraordinary virulence assault the unpre- 

 pared system without warning. For these pur- 

 poses ox blood of unimpaired vitality, purified of 

 insoluble elements by a cold process and pre- 

 served permanently aseptic, is everywhere acces- 

 sible to the physician. 



That more specialized haematherapy which is 

 directed exclusively to the resistance of specific 

 infections is called " sero-therapy," as being an 

 artificial cultivation of the blood serum to the re- 

 enforcement of its natural immunitive powers in 

 special directions, according to the particular 

 variety of infection to be combated. Various 

 species of animals were at first found to be nat- 

 urally proof or " immune " against the attacks of 

 particular species of microbes. In searching for 

 the cause of this immunity, that it might be 

 transferred to man, it was found to reside in their 

 blood, as a protective substance or potency in the 

 serum, which is bactericidal and also cytocidal 

 to the blood cells, both red and white, of animals 

 of other species. To this substance or potency is 

 given the name alexin. Buchner and Vaughan 

 independently concur in deriving this principle 

 from the leucocytes or white cells of the blood, 

 and Vaughan has demonstrated that it is con- 

 tained in the nucleus of those cells, from which 

 he has isolated a substance possessing its pro- 

 tective property, which has thence acquired the 

 name of nucleiri. By charging the blood of any 

 animal with a specific microbe or its toxic prod"- 

 ucts, and thus setting up an extraordinary con- 

 tention between the poison and its natural an- 

 tagonist in the blood of the animal but only to 

 such degree that the animal blood is sure of vic- 

 tory in the contest it is found that the protect- 

 ive principle in the blood becomes progressively 

 invigorated by the exercise, and at length to a 

 prodigious degree. Its vigor is tested by a spe- 

 cific action in the blood of susceptible animals, 

 which are quickly killed by it in sufficient quan- 

 tity, probably by the joint action of the cytocidal 

 power of the alexin, destroying whatever resist- 

 ant force the blood of the victim might have 

 possessed, and of the morbific products of the 

 microbe which, though overcome by the immu- 



