IMMUNIZATION BY MEANS OF THE BACTERIOPHAGE 269 



September 15. There were 5 stools, all free of blood. 

 September 16, 17, and 18. During these days there were 3 or 4 stools a 

 day. None of these contained blood. 



September 19. There were 2 formed stools on this day. 

 September 28. The patient was discharged from the hospital. 



In all of these cases the general condition of the patient has 

 always coincided with the severity of the intestinal symptoms. 



Two other cases of dysentery due to the Shiga bacillus, treated 

 in the same manner, but outside of the hospital, gave comparable 

 results. In these there was a cessation of the bloody stools with 

 improvement in the general condition in the twenty-four hours 

 immediately following the administration of the culture of anti- 

 Shiga bacteriophage. 



Obviously, seven cases are not sufficient to afford an absolute 

 proof in favor of the specific therapy of bacillary dysentery by 

 means of bacteriophage cultures. However, they do suffice to 

 show that the ingestion of cultures of a virulent bacteriophage — 

 virulent for the infecting bacillus — is as harmless for the sick 

 as for the healthy person. They also show that the ingested 

 bacteriophage traverses the upper digestive tract in man as it 

 does in animals, and within a few hours will be found in the 

 intestine where it grows at the expense of the bacterium for which 

 it is active. Moreover, these seven cases acquire a significance 

 from the fact that the cultures of bacteriophage restrained the 

 disease, as was the case in avian typhosis, as is shown in the 

 results of the experiments which have been recorded and in 

 experiments bearing on about one hundred cases. 



All these facts authorize clinicians to continue the experimental 

 treatment on a more elaborate scale, not only in bacillary dys- 

 entery but in other infectious human disease^ for which strains 

 of the bacteriophage have been isolated — typhoid fever, the 

 paratyphoid infections, and bubonic plague. 9 



Whatever may be the nature of the disease under considera- 

 tion, the isolation of a strain of the bacteriophage active for the 

 pathogenic bacterium is easy once it appears in an acute disease 



9 It may also be suggested that the bacteriophage may have an applica- 

 tion in surgery, as in the treatment of wounds or in peritonitis, either as 

 a preventive when an infection is to be feared, or as a therapeutic agent 

 when infection has once appeared. 



