Vaccinal immunity in relation to the serum treatment of small-pox, with a record of cases / by R.S. Thomson and Ernest L. Marsh.

  • Thomson, Robert Stevenson.
Date:
1897
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Vaccinal immunity in relation to the serum treatment of small-pox, with a record of cases / by R.S. Thomson and Ernest L. Marsh. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

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    that from 250 to 500 grammes of blood might be transfused from a vaccinated into an unvaccinated animal without producing either a specific vaccina,l eruption or immunity, but that it was not impossible that exceptionally there might be conditions of potency associated with the transfusion of a very great quantity of blood which might confer immunity upon the animal receiv- ing it. Chauveau came to a somewhat more definite conclusion —viz., that the blood of an animal having a fully developed and natural vaccinal eruption is not necessarily free from virus ; but this is so deficient that one may administer from 500 to 1000 grammes of the blood without there being present virulent matter in quantity sufficient to immunise a susceptible subject by transfusion. Following up Raynaud's observations, Pfeiffer (5) in 1884, by using small quantities of blood, obtained results which he him- self apparently considered positive and conclusive. He injected 30 grammes of defibrinated blood taken from a calf on the eighth day after vaccination into another calf assumed to be susceptible to vaccinia : vaccination performed on the sixth day after the injection proved negative. A similar experiment was carried out upon a third calf with the same result. In a further observation he injected only about a teaspoonful of blood taken from a calf four days after vaccination into a presumably sus- ceptible animal, and thereby claimed to have produced im- munity to vaccination. But Straus, Chambon and Menard (6), working in concert, showed in 1889 that the quantities of blood employed by these last experimenters were much too small to produce immunity, and that only much larger quantities— viz., 4, 5, or even 6 kilogrammes—transfused from a calf on the seventh day of a well-developed vaccinal eruption were capable of conferring it. The conclusion they drew from their obser- vations was that the blood of a vaccinated animal contained a hypothetical specific micro - organism during, the eruptive period, though in very small amount. Still, they were mchned to admit the possibility that, instead of the microbes themselves, soluble substances secreted by them in the eruption and absorbed into the circulation might confer vaccinal immunising properties upon the blood. Reasoning from the fact that vaccmation m the horse produces a generalised eruption, the former hypothesis seemed to them the more likely. In a concluding experiment made by these observers with the object of deciding whether the immunising power of the serum persisted after complete dis- appearance of the vaccinal eruption, S'S kilogrammes, practi- cally all the blood of a calf which had been vaccinated seven weeks previously, were transfused into the veins of an unvaccin- ated calf, but without producing immunity in this animal. In 1892, Sternberg (7), in association with Griffiths, made
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