The opsonic method of treatment : a short compendium for general practitioners, students, and others / by R.W. Allen.

  • Allen, R. W., 1876-1921.
Date:
1907
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The opsonic method of treatment : a short compendium for general practitioners, students, and others / by R.W. Allen. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    by the inoculation, mostly in an attenuated form, of the bacteria] agents themselves or products derived from them. Koch, in 1890, however, was the first to attempt the cure of an infection by a specific remedy—viz., of tuberculosis by means of tuberculin. Unfortunately, doses far in excess of those now employed were used, with the result that tuberculin fell into grave disrepute. The studies of Leishman on phagocytosis paved the way for the discoveries of Wright upon the bactericidal agents present in the blood, and in especial of the one to which he gave the name of ' opsonin.' Having devised a means of accurately estimating the opsonic content of the blood, he was thereby enabled to learn the reason of the previous failures of tubercuhn, more or less to obviate the attendant danger, and place the opsonic method of treatment of tuberculosis upon a scientific basis. The seed he sowed has fiourished greatly—how greatly the following pages will briefly indicate—and it would appear that to the genesis of a new, of a scientific, system of medicine the impulse has now been given. The medicine of the future is the medicine of vaccines and of sera. The empiricism of the past will give way to methods based upon scientific knowledge, and the pubHc will no longer look upon medicme with a sceptical eye, and dose themselves with inefiective nostrums. The surgeon will triumph where now he fails, and, armed with additional power, he will not fear the mroads of bacterial invasion.
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