The Hunterian oration on the etiology of puerperal fever : delivered at the Annual Meeting of the Hunterian Society / by Alfred Lewis Galabin.

  • Alfred Lewis Galabin
Date:
1887
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The Hunterian oration on the etiology of puerperal fever : delivered at the Annual Meeting of the Hunterian Society / by Alfred Lewis Galabin. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    5/20 page 3
    lum specially suitable to each zymotic disease to which it is liable, which is never reproduced when once consumed. The theory appears to me, moreover, to be refuted by the same fact that as soon as the animal is dead the anthrax bacilli will grow in the tissues of an animal protected from anthrax by a previous attack. Is it conceivable that a protecting substance once produced should remain for years intact in the animal’s body, and yet disappear immediately upon death, and before decomposition has occurred ? 3. The third explanation ascribes the acquired immunity to „an altered vital action in the cells or other tissues of the body trans- mitted by inheritance, more or less completely, to all generations of future cells which succeed the first. If Pasteur’s theory be correct as to the mode in which his inoculations for hydrophobia confer an im- munity against that disease, we must conclude that this altered vital action can be brought about not only by the multiplication of microbes within the body, but by the repeated introduction by inocu- lation of some chemical substance produced by the microbes. There is little doubt that the tissues of the body have more or less power of resisting the growth of all organisms within them. An organism is innocuous as regards which the power is complete ; that organism is pathogenic as regards which it is incomplete or absent. It may be regarded as essential to the existence of an animal that it should have the power of resisting the entrance into, or multiplication within it, of those organisms to which it is constantly or most frequently ex- posed ; and therefore as certain that such a power would be developed to adapt the animal to its environment. The mode of resistance may be that some chemical substance inimical to the multiplication of the organisms is either produced continuously by the tissues, so as to be constantly present in the body, or else is produced only by the re- action between the cells and the microbe which is assailing them. May it not be essential to the continuance of the species, not only that this resisting quality in the tissues should exist, but that it should increase in the presence of pathogenic organisms which put it to the test ? The mode of increase might be the preferential survival by natural selection of those nuclei in the body which are best adapted to destroy the assailing organisms rather than be destroyed by them. The hypothesis of such a faculty of increase of the resisting power of the tissues of the body in the presence of assailing organisms has the recommendation that it explains by one cause three facts which call for explanation. First, it accounts for the fact that, after a certain time, if the animal attacked by infectious disease does not die, the tissues of the body gain sufficient power to destroy the organisms and put an end to the disease. I think that the explanation is even a better one than that of supposing that the microbes produce some chemical substance by an inherent quality of their own, and that this substance accumulates in the body until it is sufficient in quantity to prevent their further development. For, take the case of syphilis; if the accumulation of this hypothetical substance is so slow that the disease still exists after months or years, it is difficult to suppose that it would not be continuously excreted or destroyed, and fail ever to accumulate at all to the required total amount. On the other hand, we can conceive that a struggle for existence may be prolonged even for years and yet end in the victory of the tissues of the body over the assailing organisms. Secondly, all future cells of the body, the progeny of those which acquired the improved resisting power, may be expected to inherit this property to some extent, but probably not to the full degree. The further removed are the generations of cells the weaker would be the inheritance. Thus we have an expla- nation of the fact that an immunity, more or less complete, is gene- rally conferred against future attacks of the same disease, but that this immunity is apt to become impaired in the course of time.
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3