Routing the Microbe.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLV, Issue 19, 9 November 1910, Page 62

Routing the Microbe.

Four hundred million microbes are being carefully nursed and guarded in the laboratory at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital until they can be used as a euro for one of the patients. The patient is suffering from a chronic empyema, an inflammation of the coverings of the lung, which has resulted in the formation of abscesses somewhere between the lungs and the encircling ribs. The disease first appeared seven years ago and was apparently cured by an operation. Since then, however, three fresh outbreaks have occurred in the same region, showing that the causative germs have never been thoroughly driven out of the system. The microbes under cultivation are the direct descendants of germs collected from the lung secretions. The part they will play in effecting a permanent cure of the patient was explained by one of the bacteriologists -at the laboratory to a London pressman recently. “We found that three micro-organisms scientifically knows as (1) streptococci, (2) staphylococci, and (3) pneumococci were present in about equal quantities in the discharge from the lungs. These germs were therefore cultivated, and when we have grown the three kinds to practically the same microbe-strength the microbes will be killed by heating the solutions, and a dose of dead microbes, ten millions of each variety, will be injected into the tissues under the skin of the patient’s arm. These dead microbes in the patient’s body will lead to the formation of substances which will attack and kill the three varieties of live microbes causing the trouble in the lung.” At intervals larger doses will be given •until finally one hundred million germs can be injected at one time. This maximum dose, it is expected, will complete the rout of the destructive microbes in the patient’s lungs and render the cure permanent. The reader who has persevered so far is, doubtless, leftas was the compiler of these columns—much interested, but a little dazed, and profoundly grateful that he or she is not the unfortunate patient. A few microbes one can stand, out one hundred million seems like overcrowding, doesn’t it!