PART V. 

 EXPERIMENTAL THERAPEUTICS. 



I.— THE TREATMENT OF TUBERCULOSIS. 



In the experiments hitherto made regarding the serum treatment 

 of tuberculosis five principal methods have been adopted : (i) Injec- 

 tion of blood, or serum, from animals regarded as refractory to tuber- 

 culosis ; (2) injection of extracts of organs from such animals ; (3) 

 injection of blood or serum from animals previously inoculated with 

 virulent tuberculous material, or with living cultures ; (4) injection of 

 serum from animals previously inoculated either with tuberculous pro- 

 ducts, with sterilized cultures, or with tuberculin ; (5) injection of 

 serum from animals inoculated with certain soluble products derived 

 from tubercle bacilli. 



MM. Hericourt and Richet, in a note communicated to the 

 * Academie des Sciences,' announced the result obtained by intraperi- 

 toneally injecting into rabbits already inoculated with Staphylococcus 

 pyosepticus, blood from normal healthy dogs, or from dogs which had 

 been inoculated with this staphylococcus and had recovered from the 

 local infection thus produced. In certain cases injection of normal 

 blood was followed by recovery, but when blood from prepared dogs 

 was used all the rabbits survived. 



Concluding from these results that the blood injected exercised a 

 microbicide action, MM. Hericourt and Richet asked themselves 

 whether this influence of dog's blood did not apply to other diseases, 

 to which the animal is but little sensitive, and they, therefore, extended 

 the treatment, by injection of blood, to certain of these diseases, among 

 others to tuberculosis. Experimenting on rabbits inoculated with cul- 

 tures of bovine or avian tuberculosis, they found that animals which 

 received injections of dog's blood died in the proportion of only 

 17 per cent., whilst in control animals the mortality was 55 per cent. 



