ANTITOXIN FOR OLD AGE.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXII, Issue 8865, 16 July 1907, Page 4

ANTITOXIN FOR OLD AGE.

Truly the science of inoculation against disease is making hig strides when it becomes even remotely possible to make the suggestion contained in the heading of this paragraph. Yet to treat that widespread and always fatal disease of old age by means of an injected antitoxin is the logical result of some most curious experiments recently performd by Dr. Wolfgang Weichardt, a German physicau. These experiments, although revolting in themselves, as all such experiments are, may prove to be of extraordinary value to mankind. A number of guinea-pigs were made to work continuously on a kind of miniature treadmill until they dropped dead from exhaustion; then, from the fagged muscles of these animals, a kind of juice or sap ws extracted ; and when this substance was injectcd iuto the blood of healthy guinea pigs they begau to show all the signs and symptoms of extreme exhaustion, and died in from 30 to 40 hours, as though from overwork. The analogy appears to bo complete between this peculiar expeiimeut and that proving the transnussibility of disease by inoculation, and the carollary is scarcely surprising after all that has been heard of inoculation against certain diseases by a very diluted dose of the very poison which causes those diseases. Dr. Weichardt followed up his experiments ou these Hues, and projed that a very small quantity of this “fatigue poison,’ - as he calls it, when injected into the veins ot a healthy animal acts as an antitoxin against fatigue. If it he true that old ages, Metchnikoff says, m the work of certain cells, which he calls xnicrophags, which attack the cells of the brain, liver, kidneys, etc.; and if, again, it be true, as Dr. Snyder remarks, that old age “is 'in some sense mere accumulated fatigue, then the possible hearing of those experiments upon the future of the human race becomes vaguely apparent.