COMPLEMENT FIXATION IN TREATED AND 

 UNTREATED LEPROSY 

 By Ernest W. Goodpasture 

 Of the Department of Pathology and Bacteriology, College of Medicine and 

 Surgery, University of the Philippines 

 Recently the Philippine Health Service has decreased the 

 period of compulsory detention of lepers to six months after 

 they have become bacteriologically negative; discharged lepers 

 are required to report for observation and treatment periodi- 

 cally. The reduction of the detention period from two years 

 to six months has been made, not on the assumption that these 

 sufferers from leprosy have been cured, but from a belief that 

 they are no longer a menace to the community, and in the hope 

 that, with less-rigid restriction, cases will present themselves ear- 

 lier for treatment. Even with the great hope held out by the re- 

 sults of treatment with chaulmoogra oil such changes in policy 

 must at the present time be tentative and must be dictated by 

 considerations of expediency, because there do not exist to-day 

 means of determining either that a complete cure has been 

 effected or what extent of improvement is necessary before a 

 leper can be considered as no longer a source of infection. 



Undoubtedly, in chaulmoogra oil and its products a most-prom- 

 ising means of combating leprosy on a large scale is at hand. 

 This fact makes more apparent than ever the lack of methods 

 for controlling its use and for more accurately individualizing 

 treatment, without which the success of therapy, especially on 

 such a scale as now practiced at the Culion Leper Colony, will 

 be greatly hampered. Evidences of clinical improvement and 

 the disappearance of demonstrable acid-fast bacilli from acces- 

 sible parts are of utmost importance, but it is evident that more 

 definite and measurable data are desirable; and improvements 

 in therapy must be accompanied by laboratory investigations 

 to establish methods for proper control, so that the largest 

 measure of success may be attained. 



In the present paper observations are presented which, though 

 incomplete and on too small a scale to be final, at least indicate 

 definitely the possibility of utilizing immunological methods 



