CENTURY'S PROGRESS IN SCIENTIFIC MEDICINE 



though almost any of the domesticated animals will 

 serve the purpose. 



But Dr. Roux's paper did not stop with the description 

 of laboratory methods. It told also of the practical ap- 

 plication of the serum to the treatment of numerous cases 

 of diphtheria in the hospitals of Paris applications that 

 had met with a gratifying measure of success. He made 

 it clear that a means had been found of coping success- 

 fully with what had been one of the most virulent and 

 intractable of the diseases of childhood. Hence it was 

 not strange that his paper made a sensation in all circles, 

 medical and lay alike. 



Physicians from all over the world flocked to Paris to 

 learn the details of the open secret, and within a few 

 months the new serum-therapy had an acknowledged 

 standing with the medical profession everywhere. What 

 it had accomplished was regarded as but an earnest of 

 what the new method might accomplish presently when 

 applied to the other infectious diseases. 



Efforts at such applications were immediately begun 

 in numberless directions had, indeed, been under way 

 in many a laboratory for some years before. It is too 

 early yet to speak of the results in detail. But enough 

 has been done to show that this method also is suscep- 

 tible of the widest generalization. It is not easy at the 

 present stage to sift that which is tentative from that 

 which will be permanent ; but so great an authority as 

 Behring does not hesitate to affirm that to-day we pos- 

 sess, in addition to the diphtheria antitoxine, equally 

 specific antitoxines of tetanus, cholera, typhus -fever, 

 pneumonia, and tuberculosis a set of diseases which in 

 the aggregate account for a startling proportion of the 

 general death-rate. Then it is known that Dr. Yersin, 



393 



