DIPHTHERIA ANTITOXIN 



121 



In December 1890 came the news that Behring 

 and Kitasato had at last cleared the way for the use 

 of an antitoxin :— 



"Our researches on diphtheria and on tetanus 

 have led us to the question of immunity and cure of 

 these two diseases ; and we succeeded in curing in- 

 fected animals, and in immunising healthy animals, 

 so that they have become incapable of contracting 

 diphtheria or tetanus." 



Aronsen, Sidney Martin, Escherich, Klemen- 

 siewicz, and many more, were working on the same 

 lines; and in 1893, Behring and Kossel and 

 Heubner published the first cases treated with anti- 

 toxin. Then, in 1894, came the Congress of 

 Hygiene and Demography at Budapest, and Roux's 

 triumphant account of the good results already 

 obtained. Thus the treatment is not ten years old ; 

 but, if the whole world could tabulate its results, the 

 total number of lives saved would already be some- 

 where about a quarter of a million. Men found it 

 hard at first to believe the full wonder of the dis- 

 covery : the medical journals of 1895 an< ^ l %9& still 

 contain the fossils of criticism — all the may be and 

 must be of the earlier debates on the new treatment. 

 The finest of all these fossils is embedded in the 

 Saturday Review of 2nd Feb. 1895 — H ?s a pity 

 the English press should continue to be made the cat's- 

 paw of a gang of foreign medical adventurers. To 

 get at the truth, we must reckon in thousands : 

 take, out of a whole mass of evidence, all just alike, 

 the reports from London, Berlin, Munich, Vienna, 



