THE MALARIA CURE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20322, 2 February 1928, Page 7

THE MALARIA CURE.

ITS EFFICIENCY FOR PARALYSIS. Forty years of devotion to a theory, literally a life-time of work, stand back of the achievement for which ■ Professor Julius Wagner-Jauregg, of the University of Vienna, received the 1927 Nobel prize IB medicine at Stockholm on December 10, -j It was as far .back as 1887 that Professor Wagner-Jauregg published his first paper explaining his fundamental idea that febrile disease had an anmeliorating effect on paralysis. Even then the idea was not new, for observers as long ago as the time or Hippocrates and Galen had noted '■hat intermittent fevers produced favourable effects on the paralytic insane. But the Viennese psvchiatr.st took the clinical observations of his predecessors and. contemporaries, added his own, and built up a theory that he believed in. For years he struggled to collect data to prove nis theory. He tried to induce curative effects? on hopeless paralytics by inoculation _ wittf typhoid, tuberculin, erysipelas, and mittent fevers. \ EXPERIENCES IN THE TROPICS.,' i Different workers with mental diseases observed that in the tropics where malarwr was frequent and syphilis extraordinarilycommon among the native population, patoeis, the deadly form of paralysis that ofte* occurs in the last stages of syphilis, was. unknown. This sate of affairs was specially, well demonstrated in both Java and in* China Furthermore, malaria presented: the special advantages for clinical use, ot being recurrent—it could come back at the, spirochetes, in the body enfeebled by the' first malarial attack, and subject them to uncomfortably high temperatures again and> again. It could be administered in a reLa-';' tively mild form and cured up witfir quinine. Accordingly, in 1927, Professor-Wagner-Jauregg made, his first trial malaria with nine paralytic patients. results were encouraging. He continued thdr treatment. Other institutions followed for it must be remembered that up to this., time there was no real alternative fpr paralysis but death. - To-day tne applies.--tion of th© method is practically worlds wide in the more advanced institutionswhere the paralytic insane are housed. PROFESSOR WAGNER-JAUREGG.) •' Those who have worked with Professor., Wagner-Jauregg in Vienna describe him a marvellous physician and skilled. clinician, with an infinite capacity for painstaking) reseaich. Further developments of tb<*; malarial treatment in which he is particu-. larly interested at the present time are. the preventive use of malaria in syphihtjb* patients before they develop paresis, .epd-v a project for the finding of some method whereby malarial blood can be sbipged, from laboratory to laboratory. Thisfeature is of special importance onaccount of the hit-and-miss chances of institutions finding a suitable malaria oasftj. just when they need it for inoculation of their paralytics. With all the health propaganada against the mosquito, good useful, malaria cases of the right type are getting 4 hard to find in the more enlightened countries ; AMERICAN PRACTICE. . One of the fiist places in the States to start the treatment of paralysis' by inoculation with malaria, the method for which Professor Julius WagnerJauregg, of Vienna, has just received th* 1927 Nobql prize in medicine, was few Elizabeth's Hospital for the Insane* -or* the district of Columbia.. “Shortly after 1 first heard of the malarial method hrough the Vienna medical press,” Dr William A. White, director St., Elizabeth’s, declared recently, “my old’ personal friend. Dr Weigandt, of Hamburg, came to New York to attend a psychiatric meeting several years ago. The results he, was getting at his institution in Germany made it seem to ■me worth trying It tun 6 * be remembered * that trie victims of the paralytic form of syphilis practically ’always'die. ‘Anything that gives a ray_ob hope is worth trying. Consequently, nva years ago, this month, we inoculated our first group of paralytics with malaria. ■ ■ 1 believe that we were the first mstitutibui in the country to do this. , “The underlying theory of this use .<« one disease to kill off another, explained) Dr Whits, “is that the spirochaete, Ibe causative organism of syphilis, and _ its paralytic form, paresis, is injured by bi*n temperatures. Malaria induces a. tempera- y ture that is recurrent, A spirochaete survives a temperature of lOodeg Fahr veryuncomfortably. Another run of chi Is and fever’ and the organism is still turtne weakened. Eventually it succumbs. . “We use a benign tertian malaria, a,mild form, with fever every third day. it can be kept unoer control bv quinine. Cut we of course make a careful study of ©a<h individual patient and his particular re action to the two diseases to determine whether the treatment should be continued, or not. Of the group of 103 Paralytic natimits that was mnoculated first, 66 were found h- he definitely improved at the end of three «urs, while only 12 were dea.dk to a sfmiiar group of .the numlg. not treated with malaria, and kept unde* ssnpkS’ & ctWAraxSjjg of my first cases operating an in a large downtown hotel. He was and happy, we hS* supporting job. In all. I th k. a waltl bg UsTbecause itisso’ difficult these days’ lo obtain a sample of the , necessary malarial blood for inoculation. .. Import physiological evidence malarial treatment has a enrat effect on paresis has been f ™ 6 “ ed ti J . condition of a healthy brain.