SCARLET FEVER SERUM.

Wanganui Herald, Volume XXXVII, Issue 10971, 10 June 1903, Page 4

SCARLET FEVER SERUM.

,The increasing virulence of the scarlet fever epidemic which has been raging foe several months in New Zealand, and the .resultant mortality, show that we have a •formidable foe to contend against. Seven years ago Berlin physicians were experimenting with the M^rmorek scarlet fever serum, .which was expected to prove of immense value in fighting the disease. But the experiments failed, and the use of the serum was abandoned, pending .further investigations. Little has been heard of the treatment until quite recently, when Dr ' Louis Fischer, an American physician, announced that his experiments had demonstrated the therapeutic value of Dr Hans Aronsen's serum. Dr Aronsen is a distinguished Berlin bacteriologist, who differs from other distinguished countrymen of his in declining to make positive assertions, until he is ready. He believes that the streptococcus which he isolated from a scarlet fever exhibit is the true germ of the disease, and many "authorities agree with him, but the point is not absolutely established. "Coccus" is a microorganism- that is round, and "streptococcus" is a spiral germ. Dr Aronsen took some, streptococci from the tonsil of a scarlet fever, patient, and produced what bacteriologists call a culture, which means a colony of germs in previously sterilised gelatine. He was thus able to form a scarlet fever poison, with which he inoculated horses until they became immune. From the horse's blood he obtained a serum, which he used successfully in scarlet fever cases, the experiments thus being removed from the laboratory to th' hospital. Dr Fischer, in a popular account of the use of the serum, explains that its purpose when introduced into a patient's body is not to kill the fever gfenn's-, but, simply to neutralise the ' ifi the body. "These toxins," he • says*, "are* the cause of death in the human 'system 1 , 1 ' by producing paralysis ,or deof tho heart muscles; or, b¥ ilh'e proper action of the Kidneys, they cause death by a process which we call toxaemia, which simply means blood-poisoning. Thus, the object in injecting scarlet fever serum is no so much to inhibit the growth of disease germs as to prevent blood-poisoning and the usual complications arising from poison circulating in the blood." Dr Fischer describes tws instances in which he treated apparently hopeless .cases of scarlet fever with the serum and obtained perfect recoveries in both ; and having all the evidence in mind he says, without hesitation, that given proper food, nursing and hygienic surroundings', patients can , be cured, of scarlet fever with the new serum as they; aie of diphtheria with antitoxin.