Discussion on "colds and catarrhal conditions" / R.A. O'Brien.

  • O'Brien, Richard Alfred, 1878-1970.
Date:
[1927?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Discussion on "colds and catarrhal conditions" / R.A. O'Brien. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    p $«.$■ [Excerpt from Vol. XLVII., No. 7 (1927) of the Journal of The Royal Sanitary Institute.] Discussion on “ Colds and Catarrhal Conditions.” R. A. O’Brien, C.B.E., M.D., D.P.H., Wellcome Physiological Research Laboratories, Beckenham, Kent. DR. O’Brien dealt with three aspects of the subject. After long investiga¬ tions into the flora of the nose and throat in health and during catarrh, and search for a causal filterable virus, we do not know what causes “ common colds.” After reviewing some of the more recent investigations the speaker suggested that real progress would be made only on the lines of the American work in yellow fever and dengue. If some wealthy philanthropist could persuade say 100 suitable human beings to live for a year in an isolated com¬ munity under prescribed conditions and submit themselves as experimental subjects for infection with various cultures, filtrates, etc., progress might be made. With regard to prevention by vaccines, the speaker was glad to learn from the discussion that a combined investigation in public schools was in prospect. The few large-scale experiments that had been made during the past ten years gave no proof that vaccination was a reliable prophylactic. If he might venture to comment on the investigation in prospect he would plead that a medical statistician should be not merely a member of the Committee, but at the centre of it when the scheme was drafted and in being, so that the enquiries may be so shaped as to yield the maximum of knowledge. In a recent enquiry into the effect of a vaccine on some 15,000 sheep, the speaker had been struck by the many instances in which a conclusion, which might seem to be safely based on a small group of figures, had to be modified when the full details were examined, faulty controls eliminated and large groups of figures collected and analysed. In the Metropolitan Life Assurance Company experiments in New York, Park pointed out that the vaccinated could not be truly compared with the unvaccinated, for those who volunteered most readily for vaccination were those who had suffered most fiom respira- torv troubles (21 per cent.), while amongst the unvaccinated gioup only 10 per cent, had so suffered. With regard to epidemiology generally, Dr. O’Brien considered that a concerted enquiry in residential schools of the poor-law and orphanage type or of the preparatory and public school type may give us the elementary infoi in