Serum therapy : bacterial therapeutics and vaccines / by R. T. Hewlett.

Date:
1903
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Serum therapy : bacterial therapeutics and vaccines / by R. T. Hewlett. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    One individual will pass through life almost un- touched, a second and less fortunate one seems to contract every possible disease. Immunity or insusceptibility to infective disease is not con- fined to man, but is a peculiar property of all living things, both animal and vegetable. Thus the white rat and Algerian sheep are not liable to anthrax infection ; glanders, which is common in the horse, is rare among cattle, and is un- known among swine. The monkey and ox suffer grievously from tuberculous disease, which in the dog and goat is hardly ever met with. Dealing with the vegetable kingdom, it is the aim of the horticulturist to produce varieties, especially of vegetables, insusceptible to the ravages of the various diseases, bacterial and fungoid, to which they are liable. Thus there are some varieties of the potato obtained by artificial selection which are far less liable to be attacked by the dreaded potato disease, due to a fungus, than are others. Immunity or insusceptibility to disease is probably never ab- solute ; thus the fowl, which is almost insuscep- tible to the tetanus toxin, and can be given a dose which would kill hundreds of guinea-pigs or rabbits, may be tetanised by massive doses of the toxin, and an individual who has passed unscathed through epidemics of infective disease
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