TO COMBAT THE BUBONIC PLAGUE.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XIX, Issue XXI, 13 November 1897, Page 656

TO COMBAT THE BUBONIC PLAGUE.

The astounding fact that the blood of animals which have been trained artificially to withstand a particular disease becomes endowed with the power of protecting other animals from that disease is only in the earliest stages of its application. The results, however, which have already been accomplished are of so encouraging a character that the hope is justified that serum-therapy is destined to revolutionise the treatment of disease. The latest use which has been made of this method of combatting disease is the employment of plague serum for the cure of the bubonic plague in India. Yersin, formerly a student and assistant at the Paris Pasteur Institute, has been dispatched to India to superintend the administration of this new remedy, and the serum he employs is that derived from horses which have been subjected to and have recovered from inoculations with the plague bacillus. The treatment of snake bites by means of curative serum was so recently dealt with in this magazine that it only remains to cite it as another instance of the success which is attending the new metnods of protection against disease.—“Longmans’ Magazine.’