The Medical and scientific archives of the Adelaide Hospital. No. 6 (for the year 1926.)

  • Adelaide Hospital (Adelaide, S. Aust.)
Date:
1927
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The Medical and scientific archives of the Adelaide Hospital. No. 6 (for the year 1926.). Source: Wellcome Collection.

    20/62 page 22
    V.—-REVIEW OF VACCINE THERAPY AT THE ADELAIDE HOSPITAL FROM 1914 TO 1924. [By Dr. Helen M. Mayo, Honorary Vaccinist.] [This review forms part of a Thesis successfully submitted by Dr. Mayo to the University of Adelaide for the degree of Doctor of Medicine. Some minor alterations have been made, and the elimina¬ tion of a number of charts and tables has been necessary to reduce expense. The review epitomises the experiences of Dr. Mayo as Bacteriologist in Charge of the Vaccine Department, now the Honorary Vaccinist, for a period of 11 years from 1914 to 1924. Dr. Mayo has gone earefully over the large number of cards dealing with the patients who received vaccine treatment, either Hospital patients or outside eases, and has summarised the results from two points of view. First of all the organisms met with in the various pathological con¬ ditions for which vaccines have been required are dealt with, and then in the second part the results of the vaccine treatment of the patients are considered. This w.ork summarises the experiences of the Adelaide Hospital in Vaccine Therapy, and should prove valuable as a guide to members of the profession in Australia.—Editorial Committee.] RESPIRATORY INFECTIONS. In the 11 years under review there were 306 vaccines made from nose and throat swabs, excluding the ozaena group, and 283 made from sputum. The increasing demand for vaccines in this particular type of case is well shown; in 1914 four vaccines were made from naso-pharyngeal infections and 10 from sputum, while in 1924 there were 53 from the naso-pharynx and 50 from sputum. In the earlier years 1914-1917 there was a lower incidence of Streptococci in the cases examined, and fewer vaccines contaniner these organisms were prepared. One might, perhaps, deduce from this that tliere has been an increased prevalence of streptococcal infections since the return of the overseas men and following the pandemic influenza of. 1918. It is, however, difficult to know just how far the selection of cases affects the present series. In the earlier years, when fewer cases were examined, and the demand for strep¬ tococcal vaccine was less than nowadays, many cases may have remained unrecognised. Certainly in the years 1914-1920 the incidence of streptococci as revealed in these investigations was comparatively low in sputum cases—though in 1918 a rise occurred, to be followed in the next two years by a considerable fall. In the nose and throat affections, however, the 1918 rise was followed by a further increase in 1919, diminishing again in 1923, and followed by a great sweep upwards in 1924, coincident with the streptococcal rise. The aetiology of the common cold is still suit judice, though various organisms and a filtrable virus have been regarded as causal. In view of the good effect of vaccine treatment in some cases, it would seem that the organisms thus employed— as a rule streptococci —were at least a factor in their causation. The history of nose and throat infections in the community cor¬ responds, in that there has been a greater incidence .of epidemic naso-pharyngeal infections since 1918. Evidence of this is not merely personal, but is based on the greatly increased demand for treatment of these conditions and their complications such as sinusitis, otitis media, mastoid disease, &c., as revealed by Hospital statistics. Lung infections follow more or less closely upon nose and throat infections, the organisms of the whole respiratory tract being similar and often identical.
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