Studies on immunisation : second series with appendices dealing with anti-typhoid inoculation, chemo-therapy, and statistical and other operations of induction / by Sir Almroth E. Wright.

Wright, Almroth, 1861-1947.

Date:: 1944

Credit: Studies on immunisation : second series with appendices dealing with anti-typhoid inoculation, chemo-therapy, and statistical and other operations of induction / by Sir Almroth E. Wright. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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$Experiment No. V.—Three natives with pneumonia receive Morgenroth’s drug : No. 1 a dose of I grm. by the mouth ; No. 2 a dose of I grm. hypodermically, and No. 3 a dose of 05 grm. hypodermically. Bactericidal effect exerted after administration of the drug Dilutions of the pneumococcus suspen- sion which were employed 1 25 1 17 5 1 025 1 3125 Patient | Before administration X X X X ' \ Serum kills more than 1 125 times as many 80,1119 | Five hours after administration 0 0 0 °j | pneumococci as it i did before Patient jBefore administration X X X °] 1 Serum kills more than 25 times as many 60,831 1 Five hours after administration 0 0 0 °J 1 pneumococci as it did before Patient | Before administration X X X °l i Serum kills more than 5 times as many 79,519 j Five hours after administration X 0 0 °J pneumococci as it did before The experiments which have been set forth above make it clear that in man as in mice—but we found that the same did not hold in rabbits—the blood is rendered bactericidal to the pneumococcus by the administration of aethylhydrocuprein- hydrochlorate. It is further brought out in Experiment No. 1 and more clearly in Experiment No. 2 that the opsonic power of the serum is uninfluenced by the exhibition of the drug. The reason why, in connexion with the present inquiry, we are not at liberty to experiment upon and observe sufficient cases to build up trustworthy com- parative statistics ; and the reason why we ourselves here desisted from bringing into application the statistical method, may be very briefly explained. It very quickly emerged, as soon as experiments were undertaken upon man, that aethylhydrocupreinhydrochlorate does not come up to the ideal of being poisonous for the pneumococcus, and non-poisonous for the nobler tissues of the patient. The drug is in the human organism—and this holds true also in some measure of its congener : quinine—ophthalmo-tropic. In the experience of Professor A. Fraenkel,1 which, as soon as it became avail- able, was cabled to me by Professor Morgenroth, three cases of amblyopia—all of which recovered—occurred among twenty-one pneumonic cases treated with the drug. The dose here appears to have ranged betw’een 1 and 2 grm. daily. In the meantime, in our experience in Johannesburg two cases,2 one of which went on to amaurosis, occurred in eight pneumonic patients treated. The doses of aethylhydrocupreinhydrochlorate ranged here between 0-5 and 2 grm. daily. They 1 Berliner klin. Wochenschr., 1912, No. 14. 2 In view of the fact that at this particular juncture two other cases of amblyopia occurred in the W.N.L.A. Hospital in which we were at work in patients not treated with optochin, there is just a possi- bility that those cases which occurred in our patient were not produced by the optochin.$