﻿164 STRONG. 



2. CONSIDERATION OF THE EXTENT EMPLOYED IN MAN AND THE RESULTS 



OBTAINED. 



The prophylactics described above constitute the methods of immuniza- 

 tion against plague which have been recommended from the beginning 

 of the nineteenth century up to the present time. 22 In regard to the 

 extent to which they have been used in man it may be said that Besredka 

 inoculated himself with his prophylactic but, so far as I am aware, it 

 has not been further employed in human beings. The methods of Gosio, 

 Hueppe and Kikuchi and Klein have not, to judge from the absence of 

 reports, as yet been used in man. Forty-seven persons were inoculated 

 by Shiga's method in 1899 in Kobe and Osaka. The Terni-Bandi method 

 was employed in Bio de Janeiro, Brazil, in the epidemic of 1889 to 1901. 

 According to Havelburg several hundred people were inoculated in that 

 city and no cases of plague occurred among them, with one exception, 

 where the individual sickened on the da} r of inoculation and where the 

 attack of pest was mild and resulted in the recovery of the patient. The 

 inhabitnats of Bio de Janeiro number about 750,000, and only 589 cases 

 of plague occurred in the entire city; therefore from these hiunan 

 statistics, we can not form a judgment of the value of the method. Dessy 

 in the plague epidemic in 1900, in San Nicola, La Plata, inoculated 200 

 persons with Lustig's prophylactic. Kone of the vaccinated sickened with 

 pest. The same remark applies to these statistics as to the ones collected 

 from the cases in which the Terni-Bandi method was employed. The 

 prophylactic recommended by the German Plague Commission has also not 

 been very extensively employed in human beings, although Zupitza has used 

 the method to some extent in East Africa. Over 127,000 eases in Jajjan 

 have been inoculated with small quantities (2 milligrams to each case) 

 of killed agar culture of the pest bacillus. 



The protective which has obviously most widely been used in man is 

 that recommended by Haffkine, and this I believe chiefly to be due to 

 the fact that Haffkine has resided in India and has had abundant oppor- 

 tunit} r to emplo} r his method. It is not my purpose here to enter into 

 a discussion of the available statistics of the results of the human inocula- 

 tions performed in India. They are to be found in the publications of 

 the Indian Plague Commission, in other Indian government reports, 

 and in Haffkine's very recent article on the subject. 23 Prom their study 

 one becomes convinced that it is very difficult to decide just what the 

 value of the inoculations performed by this method has been. However, 



-- In the eighteenth century some desultory attempts were made to secure 

 immunity in man by exposing the individual to direct infection with plague pus. 

 These methods were soon abandoned owing to the disastrous results following 

 their employment. I have previously considered them elsewhere. This Jour- 

 nal (1906) 1, 181. 



-Bull, de I'inst. Pasteur (190G), 4, 825. 



