PROTEIN THERAPY 



CHAPTER I 

 THE HISTORY OF PROTEIN THERAPY 



The remarkable fact that some individuals are resistant to infec- 

 tious disease while others are not; that of two seemingly equally strong 

 individuals, the one may die, the other recover from the same in- 

 fection, has always interested biologists and physicians. 



Naturally enough the efforts to explain resistance to disease have 

 varied with the mode of biological thought current at any given period. 

 It was not until the development of our instruments of precision made 

 possible the work of Pasteur and of Koch that the study of the causal 

 relation of micro-organisms to certain disease processes diverted the 

 interest of the medical mind from the philosophic tendency that had 

 characterized the early half of the last century, to the concrete, the 

 direct, the specific ideation upon which modern science is founded. 

 Naturalistic generalization gave place to accurate biological observa- 

 tion. And with pathological and bacteriological definition of disease 

 processes, the mental attitude of the physician likewise changed in 

 regard to resistance to disease as a general phenomenon to inquiry 

 regarding resistance to specific disease processes. 



The brilliant era of specificity in therapeusis that was ushered in 

 by the work of v. Behring, the fascinating serological researches of 

 Ehrlich and of Bordet, the discovery of the specific spirochaetecide by 

 Ehrlich in the field of chemotherapy, stamped with the seal of success 

 these years of medical advance advance made wholly on a back- 

 ground of the strictest specificity. Naturally enough in such a period 

 of successful achievement, minor currents passed unnoticed. Clinical 

 observations that did not fit in with the prevailing mode of thought 

 were but half heartedly put forward and soon passed into oblivion. 

 Wright but recently pointed out a few such instances that came to 

 his attention during the past twenty years: 



... "I confess to having shared the conviction that immunization is 

 always strictly specific. Twenty years ago, when it was alleged before the 

 Indian Plague Commission, that antiplague inoculation had cured eczema, 

 gonorrhea, and other miscellaneous infections, I thought the matter unde- 



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