TYPHOID 185 



subcutaneous doses of typhoid cultures, in which the living 

 bacilli had been killed by the action of heat or of anti- 

 septics, 



Widal, Griinbaum, Pfeiffer, and others, have noticed that 

 the serum ot individuals convalescent from enteric fever 

 has an inimical effect upon the typhoid bacilli, it apparently 

 containing a body which exercises a devitalising action on 

 the bacilli. Upon these results several anti-typhoid serums 

 have been recently introduced by various workers. Drs. 

 Wright and Semple of the Army Medical School, Netley, 

 have recently introduced a protective vaccine treatment 

 against typhoid, very much on the same lines as the anti- 

 choleraic treatment, for which they claim a great measure 

 of success. 



Loffler and Abel, in a recent paper,* give the details 

 of an investigation upon the specific properties of the pro- 

 tective substances in the blood of animals immunised to 

 B. typhosus and coli communis. For those details we must 

 refer the reader to the original paper; here we can only 

 give their conclusions. They are as follows : (1) By treat- 

 ing dogs with increasing doses of virulent cultures of 

 B. typhosus or B. coli, substances appear in the blood of 

 these animals which possess a specific protective property 

 only against that kind of bacillus which has led to their 

 formation. (2) The serum of normal animals protects 

 against the fatal or lower multiples of the fatal dose of 

 typhoid or coli communis. The strength of the dose sup- 

 portable bears a certain ratio to the amount of previously 

 injected serum. (3) The specific efiicacy of the protecting 

 substances in the blood of previously treated animals first 

 becomes manifest if doses of the particular bacterium are 

 given to the animal to be protected which are multiples 

 of those doses against which normal serum confers im- 

 * Centralbl. f. Baht, Paras, u. InfeU., Bd. xix., 1896, p. 51. 



