6 PROTEIN THERAPY 



and this was followed by the usual nonspecific reaction a slight rise 

 in temperature, pronounced euphoria, occasional crisis in acute 

 infectious disease, etc. 



In America we had, however, one treatment that received con- 

 siderable unfavorable notoriety, a nonspecific method in its effects, 

 although introduced on a different basis. In 1911 Schafer reported 

 the therapeutic use of a bacterial product with which he had obtained 

 remarkable recoveries in certain infectious diseases. 



This work was done at a time when the subject of mixed infec- 

 tions was prominently under discussion as an etiological factor in dis- 

 ease development. Schafer formulated a theory of immunization to 

 fit the successful use of his mixed vaccine. This was that in treat- 

 ing a disease, one had not only to consider the specific exciting organ- 

 ism in the vaccine, but that the secondary invaders the heterogeneous 

 group of semisaprophytic and saprophytic bacteria that were in sym- 

 biotic relation with the original invader had to be considered in the 

 vaccine as well. 



Schafer demonstrated his vaccine mixture in several hospitals, 

 treating chiefly arthritic cases. The injection, usually made intrave- 

 nously because subcutaneous injections were very painful, was always 

 followed by a severe general reaction, no matter whether the thera- 

 peutic result was good or bad. In some cases the success following 

 the single injection was remarkable; in others, merely the memory 

 of the very unpleasant chill and fever "the Ordeal by Chill and 

 Fire" as one facetious patient expressed it remained, with no thera- 

 peutic benefit. The selfsame vaccine in one case cured arthritis, 

 in another a catarrhal jaundice, in another a neuralgia. At this 

 time a pharmaceutical house purchased Schafer's formula and began 

 a country-wide exploitation of the same, using a trade name for the 

 product. The entire campaign, naturally enough, met with decided 

 disapproval on the part of the medical profession, not only because of 

 the proprietary nature of the product and the blatant commercial 

 method of its introduction, but because of the lack of scientific or 

 laboratory study that was evident from the very beginning. 



Herescu and Strominger attacked the problem from a different 

 position. Noting the morphological similarity that exists between the 

 gonococcus and the meningococcus, they began using antimeningococ- 

 cus serum in the treatment of gonorrheal arthritis, gonorrheal 

 ophthalmia, septicemia, and other gonorrheal complications, with con- 

 siderable success. 



The use of mixed gonococcus vaccines had become quite common 

 both in France and in Germany and in their clinical application 

 a number of observers began to use them intravenously in relatively 

 large doses. In the gonorrheal complications (and in iritis of non- 

 gonorrheal origin Kreibich) it was found that this form of injection 

 was frequently satisfactory. Brasch, who studied the general re- 



