A War Between Microbes.

Auckland Star, Volume XXI, Issue 276, 22 November 1890, Page 3 (Supplement)

A War Between Microbes.

The first impression of the reader who learns that a Russian doctor is curing diphtheria by inoculating the patient with erysipelas is fckat a joke is being perpetrated. The story Bounds like that Eastern tale of a tyrant who put out the eyes of bis subjects when they went lame, on the theory that the greater suffering would relieve the lesser. But in these days of bacteriology it is unsafe to deride any new theory becaiase it does nofc harmonise with preconceived notions. Dr. Batchinsky says that between the mi crobe of diphtheria and the microbe of erysipelas there is an 'antagonism, a sort of irrepressible conflict. Where one flourishes the other perishes, and as the erysipelas microbe is the more powerful of the two it is the diphtheria microbe that goes 60 the wall. Whether microbe eats microbe, or the higher bred insect dies of disgust at the appearanoe on the scene of his meaner fellow-creature, does not appear. All that he avers is that when he inoculated a diphtheritic patient with the poison of the erysipelas microbe the diphtheria gradually disappeared and the artificial erysipelas yielded readjly to the proper remedies. In this way he is said to have cured a number of patients, and he advises his confreres to try it whenever they have a severe case of diphtheria. We need hardly remark that the faculty will require the newspaper reports of Dr. Batchmsky'e performrnces to be confirmed before thoy adopt his practice. Ib is worth looking into. Even the stoutest believers in the bacterial thepry admit that they are powerless to combat the bacillus—to beard the lion in his den, the Douglas in his hall. When Dr. Koch discovered, a3 he believed', the bacillus of consumption people rejoiced, because they reckoned that now that the enemy was located ib would bo easy to exterminate him. But this proved impracticable. Any gas that was powerful enough to destroy the insect was pretty sure to destroy the patient} as well. Quite a number of inte'restingjexperiments were made with various carburettei gases, but no physician was bold enough to introduce them into the lupgs in the face of warnings that the attempb would be fatal. Thus Dr. Koch's discovery left matters pretty much where they were. But if this Russian medico, has really discovered a bacillus that feeds upon other bacilli or exterminates them as the white man has exterminated the Indian, by the mere foroe of contact, the faculty should surely test the discovery. Perhaps the erysipelas bacillus may be as fatal to the microbe of consumption as he is to the microbe of diphtheria. Perhaps he may 1 cultivate an appetite for other disease germs. If so, even allopaths will nob despise this new application of the rule eimilia similibus.

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