CHAPTER XIII 



SERUM THERAPY AND VACCINE THERAPY, ANTI- 

 TOXINS, SERUMS, AND VACCINES 



SERUM THERAPY 



Definition. The treatment of disease by the use of 

 the serum of immunized animals. 



Serum therapy may be said to have originated with 

 the discovery of diphtheria and tetanus antitoxin by 

 Behring and Kitasato in 1890, and vaccine therapy by 

 the discovery by Koch, in the same year, of tuberculin. 

 Disastrous results following the use of tuberculin in 

 unselected cases and improper doses led to its abandon- 

 ment for a time, but antitoxin, being more universally 

 applicable, more specific in its action, and less potent of 

 harm, sprang into immediate and continued use. More 

 careful and painstaking employment of tuberculin with 

 greater knowledge of its action has served to prove its 

 usefulness not alone as a diagnostic measure, but also as 

 a therapeutic agent in the treatment of tuberculosis. 



These discoveries, together with the development of 

 vaccine therapy and the opsonic index by Wright, of 

 England, have done more to make medicine an exact 

 science than any other discoveries occurring in a century 



