NINETEENTH-CENTURY MEDICINE 



tion of laboratory methods. It told also of the prac- 

 tical application 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 successfully with what had been one of the 

 most virulent and intractable of the diseases of child- 

 hood. 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 

 susceptible 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 au- 

 thority as Behring does not hesitate to affirm that to- 

 day we possess, 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 propor- 

 tion of the general death-rate. Then it is known that 

 Dr. Yersin, with the collaboration of his former col- 

 leagues of the Pasteur Institute, has developed, and 



343 



