The Popular Science Monthly, July, 1900: Vol. 57, May, 1900 to October, 1900Various
Science
The Popular Science Monthly, July, 1900: Vol. 57, May, 1900 to October, 1900
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
At the end of my first cholera campaign, in August, 1895, there were
altogether 31,056 natives of India, 125 Eurasians, 869 Europeans of the
civil population, 6,627 native officers and sepoys, and 294 officers
with 3,206 men of the British troops stationed in India, in all 41,787
people, who had submitted to inoculation. Observations instituted among
them, especially among prisoners, soldiers and coolies in tea estates,
with regard to whom detailed records could be kept, went to confirm
the results as detailed above. In order to lengthen, if possible,
the period of immunity, the plan was formed of inoculating stronger
vaccines and in higher doses. The inoculations are now carried on in
a Government laboratory, in Purulia, Bengal, chiefly among the people
emigrating to the cholera districts of Assam, and there is no doubt
that in the course of time a marked effect upon the prevalence of
cholera in those districts will be produced and valuable theoretical
data will be obtained.
* * * * *
There was one noticeable feature about the results of the inoculation
against cholera which early attracted my attention, and this was that
while the number of attacks and the absolute number of deaths was
strikingly influenced by the operation, the proportion of deaths to
those attacked did not appear to be changed. The case incidence was
effectively checked, but the ‘case mortality’ was not reduced. The
inoculation diminished the chances of an attack of cholera--that is,
the chances of the cholera virus penetrating into the tissues of a
man; but if it so happened that the patient was attacked and the virus
found an entrance and started growing in the system notwithstanding the
inoculation, the latter would not assist in mitigating the severity of
the symptoms or reducing the fatality of the disease. In analyzing this
result further, it seemed to me permissible to assume that the vaccine
protected against the cholera microbes themselves, but did not protect
against their poisonous products, which are the cause of the actual
symptoms.
This interpretation of the facts found support in a set of laboratory
experiments by Professor Pfeiffer and Dr. Kolle, of Koch’s Institute,
in Berlin, who showed that the blood serum of animals and persons
inoculated with the cholera vaccine, as practiced in India, acquired
an intense power of destroying cholera microbes, but exhibited
no properties capable of counteracting the effect of their toxic
products--no ‘antitoxic properties’. Combined with those of previous
experimenters these results tended to prove that two kinds of immunity
could be produced separately, and it became incumbent to devise a
plan which would secure not only a lowering of susceptibility to the
disease, but also a reduction in the case mortality.
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