122 TnEHAPEVTlC MEASURES 



success only in case gastro-intestinal digestion is incapable of 

 transforming the bacterial albumins into their amino-acids 

 (typhoid, cholera, f urunculosis) . 



The dose should be regulated according to the quantity 

 of antibody in excess contained in the blood of the patient. 

 Too large a dose may produce a rapidly fatal anaphylactic 

 crisis: too small a dose will give a slight or inappreciate 

 result. As it is often difficult to rapidly determine the exact 

 quantity of antibody in the blood of the patient one may 

 replace a single injection by a series of injections made under 

 the following conditions : 



Supposing, for example, that the total quantity of bacteria 

 to be injected is five hundred million, there would be given by 

 vein: 



First, a primary injection of 500,000 bacteria; a second 

 injection, ten minutes later 5,000,000 bacteria; a third injec- 

 tion, five minutes later 50,000,000 bacteria; a fourth injection, 

 three to five minutes later 450,000,000 bacteria; by exhaust- 

 ing little by little the antibodies in excess, one could more 

 easily reach the dose of antigen necessary to neutralize all 

 the antibody without provoking a pathologic reaction. 



SERUM THERAPY. 



It is evident that an injection of antibacterial serum, that 

 is to say, of an antibody, into an organism containing already 

 an excess of this antibody can have no curative effect where 

 the disease is due to a chronic anaphylactic state. In fact 

 we know that the injection of such a serum always causes a 

 passive anaphylactic state and we know that in a certain 

 number of diseases, tuberculosis, plague, typhoid, strepto- 

 coccus, antisera have given up to the present time no appre- 

 ciable result. There are, moreover, septicemic diseases such 

 as erysipelas, anthrax, pneumonia, cerebrospinal meningitis, 

 in which the action of specific sera is indisputable. Either 

 the bacteria of these infections secrete in the organism toxins 

 analogous to those of diphtheria and tetanus and the serum 

 acts in*this case by its antitoxic properties; or else the action 

 of the serum is analogous to that of a proteose or of a non- 



