444 BACTERIOLOGY. 



tlie goat supplies a serum that exhibits not only an 

 agglutinating power over the living bacilli, but pos- 

 sesses both protective and curative properties when in- 

 jected into other susceptible animals. 



During 1898-1899 Shiga ^ employed a protective 

 serum, made after the foregoing principles, in the treat- 

 ment of dysentery in human beings. Fwr the period 

 mentioned he treated 266 oases, and had a death-rate of 

 9.6 per cent. ; while for 1736 cases occurring at the same 

 time and in the same locality, but not so treated, there 

 was a death-rate of 34.7 per cent.^ 



Through the studies of Vedder and Duval the 

 observations of Shiga, of Flexner, and of Kruse, upon 

 acute dysentery in Japan, in the Philippine Islands, in 

 Puerto Rico, and in Germany, are found to be appli- 

 cable to acute dysentery occurring in this country. 

 The micro-organism described by Shiga was found by 

 Vedder and Duval in 22 cases of acute dysentery 

 occurring in Philadelphia, Lancaster, Pa., and New 

 Haven, Conn.; those in Lancaster and in New Haven 

 having been institutional outbreaks of the disease.' 



1 See " The Epidemic Dysentery of the Past Twenty Years in Japan," 

 by Stuart Eldridge, M. D., U. S. Marine-Hospital Service, Public 

 Health Eeports, 1900, vol. xv. No. 1, pp. 1-11. 



^ The foregoing sketch is compiled from : 



Shiga: "Ueber den Dysenterie-bacillus (Bacillus Dysenterise)," 

 Centralblatt fiir Bakteriologie und Parasitenkunde, 1898, Abt. i. Bd. 

 ' xxiv. Nos. 22, 23, 24. 



Flexner: "On the Etiology of Tropical Dysentery," Philadelphia 

 Medical Journal, Sept. 1, 1900. 



' Journal Experimental Medicine, 1902, vol. vi. p. 181. 



