YELLOW FEVER CURE

Taranaki Daily News, 15 November 1934, Page 2

YELLOW FEVER CURE

development of serum. CLAIM MADE TO IMMUNITY. The claim has been made to the French Academy of Science by Professor Nicolle, of the College de France, states the Paris correspondent of the Daily Telegraph, London, that yellow fever has now been conquered. The discovery is attributed principally to the research work carried out by Dr. Laigret, of the Pasteur Institute of Tunis, and Professor Sellards, of Harvard. After long experiments on monkeys, Dr. Laigret felt so confident of success that he asked some of his colleagues to allow themselves to be vaccinated. Three of them did so without any ill effects, and blood tests taken later, after the volunteers had been exposed to the infection, showed that they were immune. Dr. Laigret was then given special permission to use his vaccine, and treated 3000 people, most of whom were white. This measure of protection against yellow fever takes the form of three injections of serum made at intervals of 20 days. The degree of immunity conferred amounted during the tests to 30 per cent, after the first inoculation, 90 after the second, and 100 per cent, when the third and last dose of vaccine was administered. The microbe of yellow fever, for the purpose of the tests, had to be injected into the brain of a mouse. The mouse, it had been found, was immune from yellow fever. It could not by ordinary inoculation be made to contract any symptoms of it, but the introduction into its brain of the virus enabled the scientists to “breed down” the microbe until it became so inoffensive that, while it could be administered to human beings without causing them anything more than a slight and temporary inconvenience, it afforded the required protection.