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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    some observations upon the neutralising power of serum from an immune animal when mixed in small quantity with active vaccine lymph taken from a calf, or with crushed vaccinal crust from the arm of a child. The result of vaccinating a sus- ceptible calf with this mixture was in every instance negative, while the same calf thereafter was readily vaccinated with the production of characteristic and typical vesicles when inoculated with unmixed lymph. In^ the same year Reute and Enoch (8), while carrying out investigations on vaccine culture, succeeded in isolating a toxin which in their hands gave in the case of calves and pigs some- what conflicting results. Their experiments are, however, mconclusive and open to many serious objections ; but the general evidence brought forward by these observers is in favour of the immunising power of the so-called vaccine toxm. An attempt to produce an antitoxic serum by repeatedly revaccmatmg a monkey was recorded by Copeman (9) in 1893. His results, however, were not encouraging. Centanni (10), working at the subject of vaccine immunity about this time, concluded as the result of his observations that there was no constant relation between existing immunity and the presence of a protective substance in the blood-serum of a vaccinated animal, and that a high degree of immunity might exist in the absence of any such protecting substance Kramer and Boyce s (11) experiments, published in 1893, gave further effect to this opinion. These observers carried out a series of six experiments in which serum from immune calves was injected m quantities varying from 415 to 2500 grammes into other calves, these quantities corresponding to from 3-04 to 18-94 grammes per kilo, of body-weight. The serum was given at intervals in doses varying from 100 to 300 c.c. In five of the experimental calves vaccination performed within forty-eight hours after cessation of the injections ran a normal course bu in the sixth, which received a total of 1240 grammes of serum attempts at vaccination proved unsuccessful ' Landniann's (12) observations published in 1894 also point in the same direction as those of Centanni. His exptiments were made upon children; in eight cases with serum Lken from ir^ munised calves a considerable time-viz., from twenty eWit To eighty-three days after vaccination, while in two clses the f^^^^^^