INOCULATION FOR PLAGUE.

Press, Volume LVII, Issue 10638, 24 April 1900, Page 4

INOCULATION FOR PLAGUE.

It is owing to the labours of Professor Haffkine in India that some partial armour against bubonic plague is available. By a long series of experiments on animals he succeeded in producing a. virus which bears to plague some such relation as vaccine does to smallpox. The report of the Indian Plague Commission on protective inoculation has-been recently published. It shows that Professor Hafikme pursued his investigations under great difficulties. He was oppressed with many and urgent claims upon !his .time, had imperfect appliances and unskilful assistants. Much of the minute care ■and accuracy <of the bacteriological laboratory had l to be sacrificed to necessity. It is much to Ms credit that under tie circumstances ,the investigator was able to secure any of value at all. That he has done so, however, the Commissioners, who approached the question with, a high degree of scientific scepticism, appears to have no doubt. But they consider that there remains much to be desired in the preparation-, standardising, and storing of the prophylactic liquid. The liquid differs greatly in strength. Hitherto it. 'has ..been rated by the degree of its turbidity when held up to the light. The sediment, or .turbidity, consists of the bodies 6f the dead bacilli, and 1 the liquid of the nutrient fluid in-which bacilli grew. Professor Haffkine imagined that both, elements were useful, the one to ward off attack, and the other to moderate it. The Commissioners doubt the value of the nutrient liquid altogether. Should they prove to be right, there will be some advantage obtained in the administration 4>f the dose, fhe proportion of the sediment Varies ?reatly in various preparations, and the Jottles are labelled accordingly. Some reluire five cubic centimetres for a dose and some as much as twenty/The smaller dose s four-tenths of an inch square in section md five inches long. The larger dose is bur times as great. It is evident'that iven the smaller quantity could not be inected without causing considerable local nflammation. It becomes a matter of eoniderable moment therefore to secure uniormity of streagtt in the prophylactic, and to diminish the bulk of the dose while increasing its activity. J The results of plague inoculation are so I far not reducible to tables or percentages. All that is at present clear is that among the inoculated there have been fewer cases of plague in proportion to their numbers, and that the cases have yielded a smaller percentage of deaths. ' But as the date of inoculation and the date of the appearance of the disease have not been carefully preserved, it is not at present certain that many of the oases and deaths among the inoculated were not due to infection contracted just before or just after inoculation. Other sources of error in tabulating results are the differing virulence of the epidemic in various districts, andi the differing strength of the doses administered. 0f these things the amateurish operators have m their haste preserved no uniform or reliable statistics." It is, however, satisfactory to observe that the Commissioners are quite dear that no injury $o health or other evils have been traced to plague inoculation, and that the inconveniences attending it are slight and temporary. Professor Haffkine, for example, administered a large dose to himself. He suffered considerable pain next day in th« region t>f the puncture, but he attended , to his duties as usual, and his friends did not detect that anything was natives of India have shown no particular objection to being inoculated. This fc, however,

perhaps owing less to their faith in the operation than to the certificate they receive which enables them to move about freely, while the uninocnkted are segregated. On the -whole it seems clear that the human race is indebted to Professor Haffkine for a discovery of real .Value.