2 2o TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTELY 



nitrites, the sera and vaccines, the animal extracts. In this list it will 

 be noted that of the few actual drugs left from the vast accumulation 

 of centuries, nearly every one has a specific intention. 



The idea of specificity in the treatment of disease had its origin in 

 Jenner's immortal discovery of preventive inoculation, but first began 

 to attain its full growth with the development of the bacterial theory 

 of infection. Pasteur's preventive inoculations in anthrax and hy- 

 drophobia made a good start in the right direction, but the temporary 

 failure of Koch's tuberculin showed that the path was a perilous and 

 thorny one even for a man of genius. Behring's discovery of anti- 

 toxins and the success of his diphtheria antitoxin opened out new 

 aspects of the subject, but pure serotherapy with stock antitoxins has 

 been so far effective only in diphtheria, tetanus and serpent poisoning. 

 The work of Sir Almroth Wright and his followers made it clear 

 that antitoxic and antibacterial immunity are two entirely different 

 things. In the latter case, the immunity or cure is not brought about 

 by the dovetailing of the chemical bonds of toxins and antitoxins, but 

 by stimulating the tissues to produce opsonic or sauce-like materials 

 which make the pathogenic organisms more easily absorbable by the 

 white blood corpuscles. This is the phagocytosis of Metchnikoff and 

 is best attained by the injection of dead cultures or vaccines of 

 the organisms producing the disease. Vaccinotherapy has been so 

 far successful in such blood poisonings as puerperal septicaemia or fur- 

 unculosis, in gonorrhceal rheumatism, and particularly in preventive 

 inoculations against typhoid fever. In such a toxaemia as puerperal 

 fever, the infection may be due to many different bacteria and here the 

 treatment reaches such a high degree of specificity that it becomes, 

 in effect, individual and autogenous, the vaccines being prepared 

 from the blood of the lying-in woman to attain the Ehrlich ideal of 

 "charmed bullets." In typhoid fever, the success in the case of some 

 14,000 United States soldiers recently vaccinated against the disease 

 under the direction of Major F. F. Eussell, has been such that Major 

 Eussell thinks the time has come when this preventive measure should 

 be extended to the civil population also. 15 The discovery that a large 

 number of specific infections — notably malarial fever, sleeping sickness, 

 relapsing fever, hook-worm infection and syphilis — are due to animal 

 parasites, revealed still another class of diseases requiring specific treat- 

 ment — a class which probably includes cancer, rheumatic fever, small- 

 pox, yellow fever, pellagra, hydrophobia and most diseases of the skin. 

 Ehrlich was late in entering this field of specific therapeutics, but he 

 immediately began to dominate it, for it was he who put the treat- 

 ment of protozoan infection upon a scientific basis. Having discovered 

 that animal parasites can immunize themselves against the action of 



15 Boston Med. and Surg. Journal, Jan. 5, 1911, 1-8. 



