MO A MANUAL OF BACTERIOLOGY 



with water the germicidal action takes much longer to 

 accomplish, and the acidity, not the alcohol content, seems 

 to be the active factor. 1 Spirits, such as whisky or brandy, 

 if diluted with not more than one to two times the volume 

 of water, kill in ten to twenty minutes. 



Anti-typhoid serum. Attempts have been made to 

 prepare an anti-typhoid serum by inoculating horses with 

 increasing doses of typhoid bacilli, first killed (by heat, 

 chloroform, etc.) and then living, but such sera have 

 proved quite useless. 



Macfadyen 2 prepared an endotoxic serum by treating 

 horses with the endotoxin obtained by triturating the 

 bacilli in the presence of liquid air. The writer continued 

 the work, and obtained a serum which gave promising 

 results. 3 



Chantemesse, 4 by cultivating a virulent strain of the 

 typhoid bacillus in a special broth made with ox spleen, 

 heating the culture to 55 C., centrifuging and injecting 

 horses with the fluid, obtains a serum which he claims has 

 marked curative properties, the mortality being 4-3 per 

 cent., as against 17 per cent, for those subjected to ordinary 

 treatment. The patients receive very small doses of the 

 serum five or six drops and the dose is repeated only 

 two or three times. This dosage is quite different from 

 that of an ordinary antitoxic or antimicrobic serum, and 

 Wright suggested that toxins (and not anti-bodies) in the 

 serum may be the active agents. Chantemesse has 

 accepted this view, and the treatment, therefore, seems 

 to be a vaccine one. 



1 Sabrazes and Marcandier, Ann. de Vlnst. Pasteur, 1907. 



2 Proc. Ray. Soc. Lond., B, vol. Ixxi, 1903, pp. 76 and 351 ; Brit. 

 Mcd. Journ., 1906, vol. i, p. 905. 



3 See Hewlett, Goodall and Bruce, Proc. Roy. Soc. Med., vol. ii, 

 1907-08 (Medical Section), p. 245 et seq. ; and Hewlett's Serum Therapy, 

 p. 220. 



4 Trans. Fourteenth Internat. Cong. Hygiene and Demography, 1907. 



