THE LIMITS OF SERUM-THERAPY. 751 



"It will be remembered that when the soluble bacterial 

 toxins of the bacillus of diphtheria and of the bacillus of tet- 

 anus were discovered the hopes ran high that in this way would 

 be explained the action of all pathogenic bacteria; but soon 

 these hopes met with disappointment. With this disappoint- 

 ment also fell to the ground the hope that specific antitoxic 

 serums could be produced for all or most of the bacterial dis- 

 eases, just as in the case of diphtheria or tetanus. The con- 

 ditions did not prove to be so simple as first thought. . . ." 

 Indeed, the specificity that a serum was supposed to possess, 

 when obtained with a specific toxin, seems to us to have proven 

 misleading. But it is not upon a high potential that our hopes 

 for better results must rest, but upon a more scientific adjust- 

 ment of the serum to morbid conditions. 



THE LIMITS OF SERUM-THERAPY. 



What we mean by scientific adjustment of a serum to mor- 

 bid conditions is the judicious use of the dominant triad upon 

 which the organism depends to counteract the morbid effects 

 of bacteria, their toxins, and other poisons: i.e.., (I) trypsin, (2) 

 fibrinogen, and (3) the oxidizing substance. This will be illus- 

 trated by briefly reviewing their role in the more important of 

 the general infections. 



Typhoid Fever and the Typhoid State. In an excellent re- 

 view of the present status of serum-therapy F. A. Packard and 

 E. N. Willson 86 introduce the following remarks: "A great 

 hindrance to the development of serum-treatment up to the 

 present time has been the failure to consider the constant lack 

 in infections of sufficient quantities of both the binding body 

 [our oxidizing substance] and the complement [our trypsin], 

 though Wassermann has, as stated, shown in a series of experi- 

 ments, that they can be supplied, and that, by means of their 

 addition, results can be obtained that have heretofore seemed 

 impossible. He has found that, by injecting normal serum 

 (thus supplying the end-body and complement) together with 

 immune serum, he can immunize against virulent cultures and 

 toxins that produce early death when combated by the immune 



88 F. A. Packard and R. N. Willson: American Journal of the Medical Sci- 

 ences, Dec., 1902. 



