MAKING THE MICROBES POISONLESS

Wairarapa Age, 19 March 1920, Page 7

MAKING THE MICROBES POISONLESS

A discovery that may prove of im-1 mense benefit in protecting us fromj influenza and bronchial and nasal catarrh is announced in the Lancet by Captain David Thomson, R.A.M.C. * This is nothing less than making mi- < crobes vpoisonless. , Microbes make us ill by secreting poisons or toxins, of two kinds, called endotoxins and exotoxins. The latter are set free in the blood and are easily got rid of, but the former are not set free except by killing the microbes Both toxins cause our bodies to generate what are called antibodiesr—that is to say, antidotes. The anti-body set up by the exotoxin can easily be separated from the blood and injected into that of another person who has been attacked or who needs to acquire immunity. But it was not possible to separate the anti-bodies set up by the endotoxins, for these remain within the microbes. The only way to utilise them was to inject the microbes themselves, previously killed, into the veins of the persons it was sought to protect. But the dead microbesi contain also the toxin, so they have to be used in very small numbers, otherwise they would give the disease and not the immunity. Captain Thomson has discovered a way of dissolving the toxins from the microbes by washing these in weak acid solutions. This leaves. microbes containing the anti-body producing elements, but not the toxm. Captain Thomson dared to experiment upon himself. . He has always, he says, : been very susceptible; to influenza and catarrh, and in October Met inoculated himself twice with a toxineless mixture of 5000 millions of the Pfeiffer bacillus, the pneumococci and the streptococci, which are supposed to be the cause of such complaints. In the result .he found himself perfectly protected, but a month later was attacked with a catarrh which -lie ascertained by bacteriological examination wais due to a microbe named after its discoverer, Bacillus Friedlander. He then gave himself an injection of 500 millions of the bacillus in question, from which the toxine had previously been removed, and got rid of the attack in one day.