48 The Philippine Journal of Science isw 
from the effects of which he is already suffering? The view that 
there could be no possible stimulation of antibodies in a patient 
already suffering from acute infection with the typhoid organism 
has been given much thought in the effort to explain the me- 
chanism of abortive cures, because it has been observed that 
there is no immediate change or increased concentration of anti- 
bodies in the patient after injection of vaccine. (18) In the case 
of pneumonia Cole, (4) at least, has not been able to produce 
immunity in animals rapidly enough to be of therapeutic value 
within six or seven days. The observations of other writers 
that there is a slight increase of Widal titer have been questioned 
on the ground that the Wright (28) opsonic index seems now- 
adays to be an unreliable guide, for the simple reason that the 
immunologist has no better method for determining immune body 
formation. 
It has been observed in experimental work on animals that 
there is increased formation of nonspecific ferments, such as 
protease and lipase. (19) It is believed the protease has no action 
on bacteria, but that it hydrolyzes toxic protein into simpler and 
nontoxic substances, and that the lipase becomes lipoprotein 
against organisms in the final analysis. Whether the thera- 
peutic application of other substances would mobilize the same 
nonspecific antiferments remains to be seen, although it is not 
improbable that such a thing may occur. That all improve- 
ments observed in bacteriotherapy might be wholly due to such 
specific action is, in my opinion, doubtful; because the frequent 
occurrence of relapses forms one of the objections to the belief 
that bacteriotherapy is specific. 
Having set forth the two conflicting ideas in regard to the 
probable mechanism of cure, I am led to believe that the exact 
details of its mechanism are not fully known, and that in order 
to work out this problem a thorough cooperation between 
clinicians and laboratory workers is very necessary to allow 
justifiable interpretations of results. 
Now, it might be asked. What form of therapy should be 
recommended in treating typhoid fever with the methods em- 
ployed in this investigation? This is an exceedingly difficult, if 
not impossible, question to answer. It should be remembered 
that, in order to answer it satisfactorily, all the cases in each 
series should be placed under similar circumstances ; that is, each 
series should consist of the same number of patients, who should 
be of the same sex and approximate age, and treatment should 
be administered simultaneously ; the disease in each case should 
