A HISTORY OF SCIENCE 



regarding two important diseases tetanus and diph- 

 theria but the method did not come into general 

 notice until 1894, when Dr. Roux read an epoch-mak- 

 ing paper on the subject at the Congress of Hygiene at 

 Buda-Pesth. 



In this paper Dr. Roux, after adverting to the labors 

 of Behring, Ehrlich, Boer, Kossel, and Wasserman, de- 

 scribed in detail the methods that had been developed 

 at the Pasteur Institute for the development of the 

 curative serum, to which Behring had given the since- 

 familiar name antitoxine. The method consists, first, 

 of the cultivation, for some months, of the diphtheria 

 bacillus (called the Klebs-Loeffler bacillus, in honor of 

 its discoverers) in an artificial bouillon, for the devel- 

 opment of a powerful toxine capable of giving the dis- 

 ease in a virulent form. 



This toxine, after certain details of mechanical treat- 

 ment, is injected in small but increasing doses into the 

 system of an animal, care being taken to graduate the 

 amount so that the animal does not succumb to the 

 disease. After a certain course of this treatment it is 

 found that a portion of blood serum of the animal so 

 treated will act in a curative way if injected into the 

 blood of another animal, or a human patient, suffering 

 with diphtheria. In other words, according to theory, 

 an antitoxine has been developed in the system of the 

 animal subjected to the progressive inoculations of the 

 diphtheria toxine. In Dr. Roux's experience the ani- 

 mal best suited for the purpose is the horse, though al- 

 most any of the domesticated animals will serve the 

 purpose. 



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



242 



