Bacteriology in medicine and surgery : a practical manual for physicians, health officers, and students / by WM. Hallock Park ; assisted by A.R. Guerard.

  • Park, William Hallock, 1863-1939.
Date:
1900
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Bacteriology in medicine and surgery : a practical manual for physicians, health officers, and students / by WM. Hallock Park ; assisted by A.R. Guerard. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    These protective substances are found also in other fluids of the body tliau in the blood; they occur, in- deed, in the substance of all cells to a greater or less extent. How much of this is simply in solution from the serum, and where the substances are formed, is not definitely known. 5. By the injection of the blood-serum of animals which have previously passed through a specific disease or have been inoculated with the bacterial products. The first, probably, to think of the possibility of effect- ing this was Raynaud, who, in 1877, showed that the injection of large quantities of serum derived from a vaccinated calf into an animal prevented its successful vaccination. HCricourt, Richet, and others demon- strated the same thing for other diseases. The results obtained by Behring and Kitasato upon diphtheria and tetanus, where, indeed, the serum prevented the action of the poisons rather than the direct development of the bacteria, gave a still greater impetus to these investiga- tions. The immunity produced by these substances affects the entire body, as is only natural, since the blood into which they are absorbed is distributed everywhere. When the immunity is but slight, infection may take place in the more sensitive regions and still be im- possible in those tissues having more natural resistance. If the serum is injected into other animals or man the immunity is greatest immediately after absorption, and then declines, being rather quickly (in several weeks or months), almost entirely lost, so that repeated injections are required to maintain the immunity. This is dis- tinctly in contrast to the immunity acquired after the introduction of bacterial products, where the tissues