CURATIVE TREATMENT 



233 



triere chez les Annamites. Sur 72 cas de peste, 39 

 personnes chez lesquelles la maladie a evolue nor- 

 malement, ou qui n'ont ete traites que par des 

 medecins indigenes, sont mortes sans exception. 

 Les 33 autres cas ont pu etre traites par le serum, 

 quelquefois dans de bonnes conditions, mais le plus 

 souvent quelques heures seulement avant la mort. 

 Malgre" cela, nous avons obtenu 19 guerisons et 14 

 d£ces, ce qui fait une mortalite de 42 per cent., chez 

 les traites. Ainsi, (Tune part, 100 pour 100 de 

 mortalite chez les non- traites ; de £ autre, 42 per 

 cent, chez les malades qui ont re$u du sdrum. Ces 

 chififres confirment les r6sultats que j'avais obtenu 

 en Chine en 1896." 



A long review of this curative treatment, fairly 

 hopeful but nothing more, is given in the Report of 

 the Plague Commission, vol. v., pp. 269-320. The 

 Commissioners are of opinion that it ought not yet 

 to be extended, as a general measure, over all the 

 districts affected with plague ; and that there is 

 need of more work in bacteriology before it can be 

 thus extended. "We desire to record our opinion 

 that, though the method of serum-therapy, as 

 applied to plague, has not been crowned with a 

 therapeutic success in any way comparable to that 

 obtained by the application of the serum method to 

 the treatment of diphtheria, none the less the method 

 of serum-therapy is in plague, as in other infectious 

 diseases, the only method which holds forth a prospect 

 of ultimate success. " 



