The advance of bacteriological science in the diagnosis and prevention of disease : being the inaugural lecture on the foundation of the new Chair of Pathology and Bacteriology, Mason University College, delivered October 9, 1899 / by R.F.C. Leith.

  • Leith, R. F. C. (Robert Fraser Calder)
Date:
1899
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The advance of bacteriological science in the diagnosis and prevention of disease : being the inaugural lecture on the foundation of the new Chair of Pathology and Bacteriology, Mason University College, delivered October 9, 1899 / by R.F.C. Leith. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    stolen, but its aspect changes when we come to examine it more closely. The underlying principle is that one attack of a disease, from which an individual recovers, protects him from a second attack of the same disease. It is, unfortunately, not a general protection, but special only for each particu- lar disease. Thus one attack of measles, scarlet or typhoid fever will generally be found to protect the individual from a second attack of the same disease, but not from the others. This applies, so far as our experience goes, to a very large number of diseases, and for this result to be obtained it is not necessary that they should be acquired by a natural process of infect ion. Artificial inoculation of any disease, either in its ordinary or modified form, is equally efficacious. This has long been empirically known and practised in the case of small pox. Immunity to this disease is given not only by a previous attack in its ordinary form, either naturally or artificially acquired, but also by Jennerian vaccination. The inoculation of the virus taken from a small pox pustule, especially from a mild case, was often practised before Jennerian vaccination was discovered, and it was generally successful in producing the disease in a mild form and in protecting the individual from a future attack. In Jennerian vaccination the lymph is taken from a case of cowpox, which is merely the same disease in a modified form. It has now been practised for about 100 years and at the present day is in extensive and general use all over the world. Its protective efficacy is undoubted, and it has completely gained the confidence and support of everyone, except a very small minority of very prejudiced individuals. The protection afforded by these three methods is the same, differing in degree only, being, as was to be expected, greatest in the natural disease, less great in the ordinary cases artifically inoculated, and least in the vaccinated ones. The principle involved in Jennerian vaccination was followed out by Pasteur with brilliant results, and it has since formed the basis of an immense amount of work in a similar direction, which has already proved abundantly fruitful and productive. This