VACCINATION FOR PLAGUE.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume I, Issue 167, 1 July 1911, Page 4 (Supplement)

VACCINATION FOR PLAGUE.

The fact that a number of English, French, and German doctors, who loft Taris a few weeks ago for Harbin, in Manchuria, in order to fight the plague now raging there, were vaccinated aga’nst that dread complaint before setting out. serves as a reminder o’ how widespread is now the custom of combating disease- by this means. Me have not vet, it is true, got so far in to vaccinate people against housemaid’s knee, or ingrowing toenails. But vaccination against typhoid lover, carbiinol-s, influenza, hydrophobia, and a whole lot of other more or less serious ailments, is now an accomplished fact. Evon cancer has been so combated, and successfully. Th" principle, of course, is in every case the same. A person is purposely infected with a disease in a mild form, in order that when he catches it in tho ordinaly way, if over he does, its severity may be- modified. It is. in short, a case o e fighting plague with plague, small-pox with small-pox, and s:> on. The germ of the disease is cultivated artificially through successive niicrobic generations, baeoming less and less deadlv with each remove from tho parent stock, unt-1 eventually it can bo introduced into the human system withnif causing anything worse than slight temporary indisposition. A ivpic-a) case of this is afforded by the small-pox germ in ordinary vaccination. whose- original power for evil lias b -en so weakened as to interfere sear* ely at al! with the patient’s general health while conferring almost complete immunity against small-pox, at all events for a considerable time.