BACTERIOLOGY AND THE WAR. 25 
favourable to the spread of the disease. Our brave soldiers 
are struggling during the autumn and winter in “ one vast bog.”’ 
They live in trenches, and are usually soaked with water and 
caked with mud, at times contaminated with enteric bacilli. 
Under such conditions, and because they are also constantly 
) 
under fire, they cannot always drink “clean ”’ or enteric-free 
water from “ clean ”’ vessels, or eat ‘“‘ clean ’’ food with “ clean ”’ 
hands. 
A soldier with enteric is useless and a hindrance to the 
Army; still worse, he is a positive danger to his comrades 
by increasing the chance of their contracting the disease. 
Science, especially British science, has forged a new weapon— 
anti-enteric moculation—to combat a war-haunting microbe 
more deadly than bullets. It is our duty as patriots to 
encourage the use of this weapon by every means in our power, 
for then we shall be helping to save brave men, and so help 
to save our country ! 
PROTECTION BY MEANS OF SERA. 
The second of the new methods devised by bacteriologists 
to assist Nature in defeating the invasions of bacteria is the 
use of sera; the most notable examples being diphtheria anti- 
toxin and tetanus antitoxin. 
Diphtheria antitoxin is manufactured by training the 
blood of horses to resist diphtheria, with gradually increasing 
doses of the dead bodies of diphtheria bacilli and their poisons, 
that is to say, with gradually increasing doses of diphtheria 
vaccines. 
After about six months’ treatment the horse has become 
so resistant to the poisons or toxins of diphtheria that the 
original dose can often be increased 5,000 times without the 
horse experiencing the slightest mconvenience, though this 
dose would be sufficient to kill hundreds of unprotected horses. 
