﻿XIV. RELATION OF THE IMMUNITY REACTIONS BETWEEN 

 PEST, RINDEEPEST, AND HEMORRHAGIC SEPTICEMIA. 



The relationship which certain of the immunity reactions encountered 

 in the study of pest and rinderpest bear to one another is sufficiently close 

 to attract attention. Perhaps the greatest resemblance is seen in the 

 action of the immune serum in the two diseases, which in each instance 

 is anti-infectious in nature, possessing but little curative power. In 

 rinderpest as in plague, there is little hope of saving the life of the animal 

 by use of the serum, if the infection is well advanced before the serum 

 is inoculated. The highest immunity in each of these diseases is also 

 obtained by the inoculation of the living organism. 



However, the plague bacillus presents a more uniform structure in 

 the arrangement of its receptors than many of the other organisms of 

 the haemorrhagic septicaemia group. Thus, for example, it has been 

 found in swine plague that a serum which may show high protective 

 power for mice against several strains of bacilli of this group, against 

 others will in these animals exert almost no beneficial action whatsoever. 

 This is not true in the case of pest. A plague immune serum produced 

 with one pest strain possesses polyvalent properties in that it will exert 

 its anti-infectious action against all strains of the pest bacillus no 

 matter what their source, and a plague polyvalent" serum is not more or 

 less effective in its action against any one of these different strains of 

 pest than is a univalent one. 



Kolle, Otto and Hetsch 124 found that guinea pigs or rats, only in very 

 exceptional instances, could be immunized against pest infection by 

 treatment with large doses of other living bacilli of the haemorrhagic 

 septicaemia group, and, vice versa, that animals immune to pest infection 

 rarely showed any immunity against these pest-like bacteria. 



From these experiments it seems established that the receptors of 

 the two groups of bacteria are specific and differ considerably from one 

 another and that the immunity is also specific in each instance and does 

 not depend upon the more or less non-specific stimulation of the leucocytes, 

 as Terni 125 has suggested in his most recent publication on this subject. 



In connection with the experiments relating to the immunity reactions 

 between pest bacilli and the organisms of the haemorrhagic septicaemia 

 group, it may be mentioned that we have noticed in Manila that cattle 

 which had been rendered thoroughly immune to rinderpest were not 

 immune to haemorrhagic septicaemia and frequently succumbed from 

 the latter disease. The immunity here is also in each instance specific. 

 From all these reasons and particuarly because apparently only ruminants 

 are susceptible to rinderpest infection, it did not seem at all likely that 

 guinea pigs which had been inoculated with virulent rinderpest blood 

 or with antirinderpest serum would later show any immunity to pest 



^Ztsohr. f. Hyrj. u. Infectionslcrankh., Leipz. (1904), 48, 304. 

 ™Ibid. (190G), 54, 385. 



321 



