Protective vaccinations 499 



Kurth 1 at Bremen, and Rubens 2 at Gelsenkirchen were able to publish 

 a number of favourable statistics. Soon afterwards, however, a fatal 

 case occurred in the family of a well-known Berlin doctor, Langerhans 3 , 

 an accident that started a violent controversy and stirred up an active 

 campaign against serum. Langerhans's son, a boy aged 2 years, in 

 good health, was inoculated with a small dose (1*2 c.c. of this serum) 

 and succumbed about a quarter of an hour afterwards with symptoms 

 of suffocation. The post-mortem examination made by Strassman 4 

 showed the cause of death to be suffocation in consequence of the 

 aspiration of food into the respiratory passages during the act of 

 vomiting. An examination of the serum used by Langerhans did 

 not reveal any toxic action on animals or any contamination by 

 micro-organisms. All to no purpose, the serum was held answerable 

 for the death of the child, and an attempt was made to demonstrate 

 at almost any cost that its use in human practice was extremely dan- 

 gerous. Gottstein 5 joined in chorus with the over-excited opinion and 

 published a denunciation of vaccinations by antidiphtheria serum. He 

 collected from the literature of both hemispheres four cases, in all, 

 in which death had occurred some time after the injection of this 

 serum into children not suffering from diphtheria. A perusal of the 

 description of these cases is sufficient to convince one that the death 

 could in no sense be attributed to the serum, and that it could be 

 explained much more easily by the fatal action of the streptococcus, 

 the cause of the non-diphtheritic affections of the children that 

 died. 



The ineptitude of this denunciation must have done much to calm 

 public opinion, and in September of the same year, 1896, C. Frankel 6 , 

 in a report presented to the German Association of Public Hygiene, 

 was able to give a review of the state of the question of vaccination 

 against diphtheria, summing up in favour of the use of the specific 

 serum. " Taking into consideration the data collected," he remarks, 

 41 it is scarcely possible to doubt the value of immunisation by serum, [523] 

 so that we may say positively that we are now treading a path which 

 will lead us to great and important results." This very favourable 



1 Deutsche med. Wchnschr., Leipzig, 1895, SS. 426, 443, 464. 



2 Deutsche med. Wchnschr., Leipzig, 1895, S. 758. 



3 Berl klin. Wchnschr., 1896, S. 602. 



4 Berl. klin. Wchnschr., 1896, S. 516. 



6 Therap. Monatsh., Berlin, 1896, S. 269. 



6 Deutsche Vrtljschr.f. off. Gsndhtspflg., Brnschwg., 1897, Bd. xxix, Heft 1. 



322 



