400 APPLICATION OF METHODS OF BACTERIOLOGY 



In the effort to secure specific antiplague serum two 

 general plans have been followed: one, by the repeated 

 injection of horses with at first increasing doses of dead 

 pest bacilli followed by ascending doses of the living organ- 

 ism (Yersin's method); 1 the other by the injection of the 

 toxic extractives from artificially treated plague bacilli (the 

 method of Lustig 2 ). The former method aims to establish 

 an antibacterial immunity, the latter an antitoxic immunity. 



By both modes of procedure sera are obtained that possess 

 some degree of curative value in the treatment of plague, 

 but in both instances this is low. When tested on human 

 beings sick of plague under as well controlled conditions as 

 are offered by a good hospital, it was concluded by the 

 Indian Plague Commission: 3 "From the whole inquiry 

 therefore it appears that the administration of the available 

 sera is not a practicable means of bringing about any material 

 diminution in the mortality from plague in India. It may 

 well be that better results would be obtained if the treatment 

 could be commenced within a few hours of the onset of 

 the disease, this however, is in the great majority of cases, 

 impossible in ordinary practice." 



The investigations of the Pest Commissions of Germany, 

 Austria, and Egypt, as well as those of the Institutes for 

 Infectious Diseases at Berlin, Berne, and the Pasteur Insti- 

 tute of Paris, 4 have contributed much additional informa- 

 tion of importance to this subject. They confirm the orig- 

 inal views upon the protective or prophylactic value of the 

 antiplague serum, but demonstrate that as a therapeutic 

 agent it is of but limited usefulness. 



1 Annales de 1'Institute Pasteur, 1897, p. 81. 



2 Deutsche med. Wchnschr., 1897, No. 15. 



3 Journal of Hyg., Plague Supplement II, Seventh Report, 1912, p, 326. 



4 The important literature bearing on this subject is appended to the 

 report of Kolle, Hetsch, and Otto (Zeitschr. f. Hygiene, Bd. xlviii, p. 368). 



