Scientific Proceedings. 



121 



free of thrombus, and the intima, smooth and glistening. There 

 was no deposit of fibrin on the lines of suture. In spite of the in- 

 fection, the union of the vessels was excellent. The skin and the 

 muscles were cicatrized and the ends of the femur firmly united 

 by the ligature. 



85 (228) 

 The bacteriotherapy of leprosy. 

 By PAUL G. WOOLLEY (by invitation). 



[From the Government Serum Laboratory, Phrapatoom, Stam.] 



That a given organism either cannot be grown outside the 

 body, or can only be grown with great difficulty and uncertainty, 

 would appear, at first sight, to offer an insuperable obstacle to the 

 development of any method of therapeutic vaccination, — vaccina- 

 tion, that is, during the course of a disease, by inoculations with 

 the specific bacteria, or their products, — such as has been prac- 

 ticed by Koch in connection with tuberculosis, and by Wright to 

 arrest suppurative and other conditions. Preeminent among 

 microbes belonging to this category is the leprosy bacillus : the diffi- 

 culties in the way of gaining adequate growths of this organism 

 have thus far prevented the development of any bacteriothera- 

 peutic means of treating the disease due thereto. 



A possible method of overcoming the obstacle has suggested 

 itself to me ; and I am already testing it. But in Siam, the number 

 of suitable cases presenting themselves is not great. The value of 

 the method can only be determined by noting the results gained 

 in a relatively considerable number of cases ; hence it has seemed 

 to me advisable to describe it in the hope that others having fuller 

 opportunities may be induced to test the procedure and its value. 

 My somewhat remote station is against a familiarity with the most 

 recent literature : to my knowledge the method has not hitherto 

 been published, and is original. The nearest approach to it, that 

 of preventive vaccination against black-leg by means of the desic- 

 cated spore-bearing muscle tissue of a previous case, differs in 

 many important particulars. 



Briefly, it seemed to me that lacking pure cultures for the pur- 

 pose, I might make the leprosy patient serve as his own culture 

 medium. It is well known how abundant are the bacilli in the 



