Serum Treatment

1900

The discovery of the serum treatment of disease was the outcome of attempts to solve the mystery of immunity, or the well-known fact that one attack of an infectious disease, such as scarlet fever or measles, almost always renders a person secure against any subsequent exposure.

As so often happens, in the pursuit of knowledge, the object sought was not found — for the true cause of immunity is yet to be discovered; but something of more practical value was lighted upon, namely, a means by which this immunity can be artificially produced.

It was found that during the course of the disease the patient's blood undergoes some change, or acquires some new property, by virtue of which the liability to take that disease is destroyed. Then it was discovered that a little of the blood of a person who has in this way become immune, injected into the veins of another person who has not yet had the disease, will render him immune also.

But this is not all; for the injection of this blood into a person who has just begun to sicken with the disease seems to hasten the cure. It is like a weapon in the hand of a man attacked, or about to be attacked, by robbers. If he has the weapon beforehand he can ward off the attack; or if it is put into his hand just as he is being attacked, he can use it to drive the assailants away.

To cure disease, however, the remedy must be used early, for a weapon is useless to a man who has already been beaten into unconsciousness.

As it is manifestly impossible to use human blood for the purpose named, recourse has been had to animals. Injections of the virus are made repeatedly into a horse, until his blood has acquired a high degree of immunizing power. Then he is bled, and the red and white corpuscles are removed; for the curative properties reside in the fluid part of the blood, that is to say, the serum. This is put up in sealed flasks, and is ready for use.

The serum most in use is the well-known diphtheria antitoxin, although tetanus antitoxin and other serums are also employed occasionally.

Physicians are by no means agreed as to the value of the serum treatment of disease, many claiming that diphtheria antitoxin, for example, has no curative properties whatever; others, again, are equally emphatic in their contention that diphtheria is a much less serious disease since the serum treatment of it has come into general use, and they go so far as to believe that the time will come when, through this serum treatment, Pasteur's saying will be realized, that "it is in the power of man to make all parasitic (or infectious) diseases disappear from the world." — Youth's Companion.