The Evening Star MONDAY, JULY 16, 1906.

Evening Star, Issue 12866, 16 July 1906, Page 4

The Evening Star MONDAY, JULY 16, 1906.

The new opsonic” treatment of consumption, 'lupus, and other disThe Mar eases caused in itrm-organ-igainst isms j. s attracting attention in Cqmuuaptlan. the English newspaper j„ st now, the London Hospital Board having published some inteiesting details of its working. The treatment is waDy still in its infancy, but some astonishing results have already been achieved, and a wide field of new research opened up to medical investigators. It may, perhaps, be recalled that some months ago a young Auckland medical specialist, Dr R. W. Allen, was mentioned in our London letter as being one of the few who have experimented in the opsonic treatment, the results achieved achieved being sufficiently successful to induce him to specialise in this new branch of medicine. The opsonic method has now heen adopted in several London hospitals, and great things are expected of it. To explain in non-technical language what the new treatment is and how it works is not altogether easy. It is based on the fact that the doctors are now able, by testing the patient’s blood, to discover his exact power of resisting the disease, and' to strengthen that power if it ia below the normal. The treatment has been well explained by the secretary of the London Hospital in the course of an interview, “if yon look at a drop of blood through a microscope,” he said, “you will see a lot of led corpuscles, and perhaps erne in 500 of larger white corpuscles. Thirty years or so ago it was a great puzzle as to what was the exact duty of these white corpuscles. Experiment has shown that if a sterilised tubercle culture is added to a drop of fresh blood, and the whole placed in an incubator at the temperature of the body for a quarter of an hour, and then a microscopic examination made, the tubercle micro-organ-isms will have been collected in these white corpuscles, by which they are carried away. But this collection of tie micro-organisms can only take place after they hare been acted on by what is called the ‘opsonin,’ aaaring in the serum of the blood, which is

the real protective agency. If this protective power is weak, tho number of the micro-organisms captured, as it were, by the white corpuscles will bo much smaller than in the case of a normally healthy person. What is needed, then; ia some method of increasing the patient’s power of resistance where it is weak, and this is found by injecting tubercle vaccine in a sterilised form. The immediate effect of such an injection is always first to lower slightly the power of resistance, but the decline is quickly followed by an increase, and it has been found quite possible by a series of injections to bring the patient’s power of resistance up to the ordinary normal level.’’ Some remarkable cures have been obtained, and particularly in cases of lupus, which is caused by the same microbe as consumption. Cases which the Finsen light was powerless to affect have, by means of regular injections, had their protective power raised, and the light treatment has then been attended ■with complete success. The opsonic treatment takes a very long lime, and involves very delicate analytical work. It is impossible for a doctor to look after a large number of cases at onco. The microscopic examination and testing of the blood are a slow and difficult business; and when a patient is being treated with injections his blood must sometimes be tested every day, and never less than onco a week. Still, :hc method of working will no doubt bo improved. as time goes on, and meanwhile consumption specialists are decidedly sanguine about the future of the opsonic treatment.