SERUM TREATMENT OF INFECTIOUS PNEUMONIA. 
21 
most of us must admit that the results were somewhat remark¬ 
able ; at the same time we must not forget that to get good 
results the disease must be bacterial. The makers (the H. K. 
Mulford Company, of Philadelphia, Pa.) are very modest about it, 
claiming only that it is a bactericide, not an antitoxin proper, and 
one of their professional employes seems to be under the impres¬ 
sion that pneumonia due to physical causes (traumatic pneumonia, 
using the term in a wide sense) is common, and that no benefit 
could of course be expected in this class of cases. 
I am, however, of opinion that the diplococcns complicates 
most of these cases, and that the serum should be used in the 
hope that it would at least prevent secondary invasions of lung 
tissue and so protect the patients. 
An interesting part of this experience is the prompt reduc¬ 
tion of temperature, and if the serum will do no more than this 
and it turns out that its extended use is as absolutely harmless 
as in this series of cases, it will make a very valuable addition 
to our materia medica, for we are much in need of an absolute 
and safe antipyretic. The ideal drug of this class is of course 
one that will diminish heat production and at the same time 
leave no depressive action on the heart or deleterious after effects 
on the tissues. What we have to be content with at present 
is found in drugs of the coal-tar series—as antipyrine or acet- 
anilid. These, of course, not only decrease production by their 
influence on the heat centres, but also increase heat dissipation, 
the latter function being decidedly at the expense of the organ¬ 
ism ; and while this is a step in advance of the heat dissipation 
pure and simple, with which our ancestors had to be content, 
still a step further to an ideal heat diminution is devoutly to be 
wished. I do not say this serum covers this ground, but it has 
carried these cases through for me quickly, safely, and pleas¬ 
antly, and I shall use it again. 
My thanks are due to Mr. Milton Campbell, the president 
of the H. K. Mulford Co., for his kindness in supplying me with 
serum and for the very “professional” attitude he assumed in the 
premises-, making it in no sense a business or advertising matter. 
