Rabies and Hydrophobia. Lesions, Prevention ^ Treatment. 289 



cess does not consist in an entire extinction of rabies, but merely 

 in the reducing of its evil results ; its success is indeed based on 

 a preservation and propagation of the germ and a continuous 

 danger of infection of new subjects ; finally, the proposition to 

 end the disease by passing the whole canine race through the 

 treatment, is open to the objections that this would require a 

 fabulous outlay, and that even then some rare cases are not 

 found to be fully protected. To continue the disease, when it 

 may be exterminated, and to palliate its results by the treatment 

 of generation after generation of dogs, must be promptly con- 

 demned by the political economist, to say nothing of the con- 

 sideration of probable human infection. 



Orrotherapy. It is not surprising that essays were made in 

 the line of serum treatment. Babes and L,epp in 1889 had some 

 encouraging results in transferring the blood of an immune ani- 

 mal into a healthy one. But Tizzoni, Schwarz and Centanni 

 have especially worked out this method. These have shown that 

 the blood serum of immunized animals destroyed the virulence of 

 the rabic poison, whether mixed with it before injection, or in- 

 jected with it, or injected within twenty-four hours afterward. 

 A very small amount of the serum is required and though delayed 

 until the end of the first half of the incubation period, it is only 

 necessary to multiply the amount by six or eight times. In this 

 it has a great advantage over the antitoxin of diphtheria or teta- 

 nus, the former of which has to be multiplied 20 to 100 times, 

 and the latter 1000 to 2000 times in the later stages of incubation. 

 Further, it is possible by drying to secure the serum in a per- 

 manent form which will remain active for a length of time if se- 

 cluded from air and light. 



This has the decided advantages over the Pasteur treatment, 

 (1) that it employs the antitoxin already formed instead of wait- 

 ing for its formation in the body of the subject injected with the 

 attenuated virus : and (2) that it does not introduce into the 

 system a virulent germ capable of propagating in a favorable 

 medium, but only an agent which is antidotal to that germ. 



It has the disadvantage as compared with Pasteur's method 



that its action is purely therapeutic in the sense of acting as an 



antidote, while it produces no permanent immunity. It does not 



like the toxins educate the cells to produce an encrease of anti- 



19 



