December 12, 1895] 



NATURE 



139 



In the address on Pasteur, delivered before the British Associa- 

 tion at Ipswich, Prof. Percy Frankland distinctly, attributes this 

 discovery to Hericourt and Richet. He said : " This astound- 

 ing antitoxic property of the blood-serum of an artificially im- 

 munised aninaal was first discovered by Hericourt and Richet in 

 respect of animals immunised against one of the common 

 abscess-producing organisms."^ 



Now Dr. Welch goes out of his way in a foot-note reference 

 to Babes and Lepp to mention that " Richet and Hericourt are 

 sometimes quoted as the first experimenters to show that the 

 blood of animals is capable of conferring protection upon sus- 

 •ceptible animals, but their work has no reference io ntode>tt 



rsertt/n- therapy, as their experiments were made with the blood of 

 dogs which had not previously been vaccinated or treated in any 

 way." 



If we refer to the Coniptes rendtis for 1 888, we shall find a 

 paper by Hericourt and Richet entitled " Sur un microbe 

 pyogene et septique (Staphylococcus pyoseptictis) et sur la 

 vaccination contra ses effets." In this memoir the authors de- 

 scribe their experiments on procuring immunity in rabbits 

 towards this organism by inoculating them with weakened 

 cultures of it. They conclude by saying : " The methods which 

 we have used to procure these vaccinations are those in general 

 ise by Pasteur and his pupils. But we have conceived of a new 

 nethod (the peritoneal transfusion of a dog's blood into rabbits), 

 a process which also produces vaccination ; in a subsequent 

 communication we shall describe in detail the results obtained 

 by this method." 



It is this subsequent paper v<i\\\ch has been entirely overlooked 

 Ijy Welch and other investigators. Strange to say, also, there 

 is absolutely no reference to it in the Centralblatt fiir Bakteri- 

 .'•logie, although a very incomplete abstract of the earlier paper 

 lid appear in this journal. This second communication, to 

 >\ hich, in the light of recent scientific investigations on the use 

 f antitoxic serum, much interest and importance attaches, is 

 ntitled' " De la transfusion peritoneale, et de I'immunite 

 |u"elle confere" {Coniptes rendiis, 1888, p. 748). 



The following passage, taken from this memoir, will perhaps 

 most clearly convey some idea of what results were obtained by 

 .Hericourt and Richet in these first investigations in serum- 

 therapy: — " On October 4, seven rabbits were inoculated with 

 four drops of a culture of the Staphylococcus pyosepticus, six 

 "having received 48 hours previously some dog's blood in the 

 peritoneum. The control animal''^ died in less than 20 hours 

 oifter the inoculation. Of the six others, three died, one 

 50 hours, the other 70 hours, and the third 90 hours after the 

 inoculation. The three others survived ; they are sli41 alive at 

 the present time. To explain the apparent inconsistency of 

 these results, it must be noted that the transfused blood was 

 -obtained from two different sources : first, from a dog which had 

 never been experimented upon — the rabbits which received this 

 blood did not survive the inoculation ; secondly, from a dog which 

 had survived inoculation made some months previously with 

 the Staphylococcus pyosepticus : the three rabbits which received 

 "this blood survived the subsequent inoculation with the Staphy- 

 lococcus pyosepticus." These results were confirmed by further 

 Investigations, proving, as the authors say, that it was not " un 

 fait exceptionnel." In the course of their experiments Hericourt 

 «nd Richet found that the blood of untreated dogs did endow 

 rabbits with a certain degree of protection from subsequent 

 ■inoculation with this micro-organism, inasmuch as the course 

 pursued by the disease in the case of these rabbits was distinctly 

 mo<lified, being less virulent and less rapid, but they expressly 

 state that they consider the assumption justified that the blood 

 •of dogs inoculated with this Staphylococcus, is capable of con- 

 ferring immunity of a more complete nature than that obtained 

 Ijy using the blood from untreated dogs. 



It is sufficiently apparent, therefore, that these experiments of 

 Hericourt and Richet, far from having " no reference to modern 

 serum-therapy," are the original investigations from which 

 the antitoxic treatment of disease by means of blood-serum has 

 directly followed. 



The authors conclude this most interesting memoir by 

 expressing the hope that the injection of the blood of an animal 

 •endowed with a natural power of resisting a particular disease 

 may possibly be able to protect other animals, not so fortunately 

 endowed, from attacks of this disease. So far, however, this 

 'iipe has not been realised. In an article entitled " Recent Studies 



on Diphtheria ' .(Nature, August 22, 1895, p. 393), it was 

 pointed out how the natural or race immunity of one animal to 

 a particular disease was not capable of being transferred, by 

 nieans of its blood-serum, to another animal susceptible to this 

 disease. We read : " This remarkable circumstance has l>een 

 once more very clearly demonstrated by Wassermann in the case 

 of diphtheria, to which disease white rats are absolutely immune. 

 In order to test the character of white-rat-serum as regards 

 diphtheria infection, fatal doses of diphtheria toxin were 

 administered to guinea-pigs along with such serum, but in no 

 case did the latter survive, showing that this serum possessed no 

 anti-diphtheritic properties whatever, and was incapable of 

 protecting animals from diphtheria infection." 



In connection with the wider application of anti-toxic serum in 

 the treatment of disease, it is interesting to note that already in 

 1889 Messrs. Babes and Lepp experimented with it successfully in 

 the treatment of rabies, obtaining the anti-toxic serum from 

 a dog rendered artificially immune to hydrophobia. So far, 

 but little advance has been made with it in this direction ; since, 

 however, scientific attention has been so attracted to this subject 

 by the success which has attended the use of anti-toxic serum in 

 diphtheria, we may certainly anticipate many fresh developments 

 in its beneficent application. 



1 Times Report, September 17, 1805. 

 '-' Not preViouily'inocutateJ with dug 



1 blood. 



NO. 1363. VOL. 53] 



T//E MAJOR PREMISS IN PHYSICAL 

 CHEMISTRY.^ 



/^"'HEMISTRV is essentially an inductive science, mathematics 

 ^-^ is essentially deductive, while physics holds an inter- 

 mediate position. Yet in our own science, generalisations are 

 reached from time to time, which serve as major premises for 

 syllogistic reasoning. For example, the proposition that each 

 portion of matter has constant weight is at the basis of our 

 knowledge of chemical equivalents as determined by the 

 balance ; the isolation of the metals of the alkalis and alkaline 

 earths led to an insight into the nature of salts in general 

 as metallic compounds; and the "periodic law," though not 

 expressed in precise mathematical language, is a most fruitful 

 generalisation of generalisations. 



Physical chemistry, following the logical methods already so 

 largely adopted in physics, is characterised by a readiness to use 

 the major premiss. Instead of making a separate experiment 

 to answer each question of fact, the conclusion may often be 

 reached on theoretical grounds, in the .same sense as an engineer 

 may demonstrate the stability of the structure he has designed, 

 or the movements of a newly invented machine. What, then, 

 is the leading major premiss in modern chemistr)' ? and what 

 shall be the conditions of fruitfulness ? 



The doctrine of energy, as based upon thermo-dynamics, 

 embraces the two laws of conservation and correlation ; first, 

 energy (while convertible from one form to another) is con.stant 

 in amount ; second, while work may be wholly converted into 

 heat, only a definite fraction of heat can be converted into 

 work. To specify more clearly, if a quantity of heat, H, is 

 received at temperature T (from ab.soluie zero), and if this is 

 converted into work as far as possible by any ideal process until 

 there remains the quantity H' at temperature T', then the simple 

 theorem holds that the two quantities of heat are proportional 

 to the two temperatures ; and of course the difference between 

 heat received and heat remaining (that is, the work) is propor- 

 tional to the difference in temperature. Or in algebraic 

 language, 



H:H' ::T:T' 



H : H-H' : : T : T-T' 



Work, = H-H'=^^,H 



This equation shows what fraction of the heat may be con- 

 verted into work, under the most favourable conditions ; namely, 

 the fall in temperature divided by the absolute temperature at 

 which the heat is supplied. 



My present purpose is to present this topic in its bare out- 

 lines, and with the greatest simplicity po.ssible. Those who wi.sh 

 to follow the deductive reasoning in detail must use the notation of 

 the calculus, in accordance with the following .step.s. Combining 

 the formula for the total work (as implied in the first law) with 

 that for work derived from change of temperature (the second 



1 Abstn-ict of a paper prepared by request, to introduce the topic of 

 Physical Chemistry, for the American Association for the Advanc:mi:U of 

 Science. Read September 2, 1895. (Reprinted fro n .SVjV'/iv.) 



