346 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XIV. No. 355 



In conclusion we will endeavor to answer the question as to the 

 suitability of the country for immigration. The Shire highlands, 

 with their cold, bracing air, have proved by the test of many years 

 to be well adapted to the conditions of European life. Scotch and 

 English ladies have lived there in excellent health, and their chil- 

 dren are robust and healthy. If this be so, we think that the still 

 higher plateaus farther inland should prove healthy, and capable of 

 producing the vegetables and other minor necessities of European 

 life. But to attain these highlands, the malarious coast district 

 must be passed through, and the graves of many ladies in this area 

 prove its deadly influence. The first requisite, therefore, is a 

 means of rapid conveyance from the coast, together with more 

 fully developed means of accommodation and comfort. Theopen- 

 ing-up of the navigation of the Zambezi from its mouth, thus 

 establishing a direct communication with the sea-going steamers, 

 would largely effect this, and the new steamer of the Lakes Com- 

 pany now put on the river leaves nothing to be desired for comfort. 

 Enthusiasts may even picture the time when the railway — already 

 projected — from the Cape shall be extended from Kimberley to 

 the Zambezi, and so the malarious coast district be avoided alto-' 

 gether. But even the coast area itself has long been peopled by 

 British Indian settlers, who have penetrated the whole length of 

 the Kwakwa. The shores of the lake would be admirably suited 

 for Indian immigration. We would, however, urge that such im- 

 migrants be drawn for northern India. 



Nyassa-Land is a country^ as Lord Salisbury recently said, dis- 

 covered by British, opened up and to some extent civilized by us, 

 and its possibilities we honestly believe to be great. Its climate is 

 ■for the most part good, its scenery picturesque and enchanting. 

 The time has come for its development and gradual civilization, 

 and Britain must decide now or never, whether this opportunity is 

 to be ours, or whether this land — historical in its past associations 

 with the names of Livingstone and his many successors, and full 

 of promise for the future — is to be ours, or to be left to the Arab 

 slave-dealer for the present, and the fortuitous exploitation of some 

 -European nation in the further future. 



HEALTH MATTERS. 



Immunity and Immunization. 



Dr. H. BuCHNER has recently published a new study of this 

 subject, and The Sanitarium gives the following resumi of it : 

 Immunity in its full meaning signifies a condition of the body 

 which permanently opposes the development of infectious processes; 

 but there are conditions which act transiently in the same way 

 against the danger of infection already existing. Buchner exem- 

 plifies this by a person attacked with typhus. In this case the dis- 

 ease, the continuous multiplication of bacilli, is not terminated be- 

 fore all tissues acquire transient immunity against the fungi. But 

 what are the means by which the organism acquires immunity in a 

 permanent or transitory way ? To answer this question, Buchner 

 first refers to Pasteur's protective inoculation, the actual efficiency 

 of which is generally admitted at the present time. Buchner calls 

 it a great triumph that it should be possible to immunize a living 

 organism in this way without hurting its tissues. 



Again, another means of immunization comes from France. 

 Chamberland and Roux have injected intra-peritoneally the chemi- 

 cal substances of bacteria (ptomainia) in experiments on animals 

 affected with malign oedema and with anthrax, without taking the 

 bacteria themselves. The animals were actually rendered resistant 

 to inoculation with living bacilli of the corresponding disease. This 

 discovery is practically very important, inasmuch as the effects of 

 chemical agents for the purpose of immunization are certainly more 

 accurately measurable than those of living fungi. Theoretically 

 the discoverers neglected drawing the necessary consequences from 

 their results, and this has been done by Buchner with zealous en- 

 ■ergy. He prefaces his developments with a discussion of the 

 means by which transitory immunity may be obtained. It might 

 ibe possible to neutralize specific ptomaines in the organism by 

 ■means of certain substances, just as Behring succeeded in decom- 

 posing the ptomaine of cholera-vibrios, cadaverine, by means of 

 iodoform. Nature uses inflammation as an antidote against the 

 invasion of fungi. Ten years ago Buchner pointed to this re-action 



of the organism by which it acquires transient immunity, but at 

 the present day he disposes of proofs for his hypothesis. In a for- 

 mer paper, Buchner has described anthracic pneumonia produced 

 by the inhalation of anthrax bacilli. Its symptoms are those of a 

 sero-fibrinous hemorrhagic pneumonia. In the alveoli there is 

 found an exudation abounding in cellules and an immense quantity 

 of anthrax bacilli. On the other hand, the pulmonary capillaries 

 and the larger vessels were absolutely devoid of bacilli, the spleen 

 containing only a very few of them. 



For the purpose of investigating the modus by which the agents 

 of infection are arrested in their further invasion, Buchner has lately 

 instituted some experiments, which led to the conclusion that " in- 

 flammatory re-action not only possesses the power of arresting the 

 passage of bacteria through the pulmonary surface, but actually to 

 cause degeneration of the infectious bacteria, and consequent de- 

 struction." It is not permitted here to give in detail the interesting 

 experiments which Buchner, jointly with Dr. Schickhardt, has per- 

 formed on animals infected with anthrax bacilli. The microscopi- 

 cal result confirmed Buchner's hypothesis that inflammation origi- 

 nates in consequence of the bacillus, but that conversely, once 

 originated, it induces degeneration in the bacillus, and may doubt- 

 less cause its complete decay. The latter hypothesis is corrobo- 

 rated by the shapeless agglomerations of granules which are found, 

 and which represent a transformation of the bacilli. 



In accordance with the fact of an antibacterial, immunizing 

 action of inflammation, Ribbert and Lahr have ascertained, after 

 injecting staphylococcus avoreus into the trachea, that the local in- 

 flam mation prevents the bacteria from penetrating into the organism, 

 and subsequently causes them to degenerate and to die. Emme- 

 rich, and similarly Paulowski, have tried already to utilize these ex- 

 periences in a practical way, — the former by his experiments with 

 injection of erysipelas cocci in animals affected with anthrax, the 

 latter by establishing the fact that even simple saprophytic fungi 

 have a restraining curative influence on simultaneous anthracic in- 

 fection. It may be possible in some other way, as tried already by 

 Landerer by means of Peruvian balsam, to create in the organism 

 a condition of excitation which might be used as a means of im- 

 munization. Through what kind of chemical and microscopical 

 conditions an inflammatory excitation, or immunity acquired by 

 protective inoculation, may act deleteriously on the bearers of in- 

 fection, is explained on the results of Metschnikoff 's well-known 

 phagocytic theory. In Buchner's opinion, this theory constitutes 

 one of the greatest additions to our morphological and physiologi- 

 cal science of infectious processes. 



Metschnikoff 's doctrine, opposed from many sides, draws its 

 principal importance from the fact of having demonstrated that 

 viable, pathogenic bacteria may indeed be devoured by cellular ele- 

 ments. It explains how leucocystic and other cellular elements 

 migrate into certain tissues in a condition of inflammatory excita- 

 tion, and, exposed to infection, there display their phagocytic ac- 

 tion. It is true, Buchner does not consider every thing explained 

 by this process alone. On the contrary, a certain chemical re- 

 action and concentration of the different tissue-fluids seems to be 

 necessary for the debilitation and destruction of the fungi. Buch- 

 ner, on the ground of experiment, is inclined to suppose the exist- 

 ence of fluid substances which, formed by the febrile process, have 

 an antibacterial action. 



This explanation being quite satisfactory for transient immunity, 

 there are other processes to be considered in permanent immunity. 

 Volt's experiments in Buchner's laboratory have recently furnished 

 the proof that the organism possesses in the living blood-plasma 

 chemical properties of this kind, deleterious for bacteria. Living 

 blood, generally, is an unfit alimentary substratum, but by a change 

 of its quality it may become a proper medium, and in this case a 

 morbid affection of the organism would take place ; the period of 

 incubation would then be the time in which the blood is stiU 

 possessed of those properties which arrest the bacteria in their 

 growth, or possibly even destroy them. Immunity, then, would 

 represent a permanent power of the organism to maintain the pe- 

 riod of incubation. The question, in what way transition to actual 

 morbidity is prevented, is answered by Buchner, availing himself of 

 the experimental results obtained by Chamberland and Roux, by 

 the suggestion that it is the adaptation of the organism to the spe- 



