Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/826

744 and, above all, more intensive—that is to say, the virulent cord is injected several times."

The statistics arranged with reference to the location of the bite are given by Perdrix as follows:

In the infectious diseases of man, which have been proved to be due to pathogenic bacteria, the most satisfactory evidence of the value of protective inoculations has been obtained in cholera and in diphtheria. In the first-mentioned disease protective inoculations were practiced on a large scale in Spain, during the epidemic of 1884 and 1885, by the method of Ferran. This consisted in the introduction of a small amount of a pure culture of the cholera spirillum into the subcutaneous connective tissue, by means of a hypodermic syringe. Shakespeare, who was sent by our Government to investigate the merits of this method of prophylaxis, was disposed to think well of it. He says:

"There is still another result of the preventive inoculations of Ferran apparently shown by these statistics. I refer to the apparent marked shortening of the course of the epidemic after a large percentage of the inhabitants have become inoculated. It would seem, therefore, from analysis of the official statistics, that the practice of the anticholeraic inoculation after the method of Ferran, besides giving the subject inoculated a considerable immunity from attack and death by cholera, furnishes a means of bringing an epidemic rapidly to an end."

More recently Haffkine has advanced evidence in favor of the protective value of subcutaneous inoculations with cholera cultures. His experiments in India have been made in Calcutta, Gaya, Cawnpore, and Lucknow. Those exposed, during the epidemic prevalence of cholera, under the same conditions as to locality, water supply, etc., are divided into two groups, the inoculated and the non-inoculated. In the first group, which includes 500 inoculated individuals, 21 cases occurred, of which 19 were fatal, a mortality of 3·8 per cent. In the second group were 1,735 individuals; the number of cases in this group was 174; number of deaths, 113; percentage of mortality, 6·51.

Whether this method will be found to have any great practical value can only be determined by more extended experiments. But in view of the fact that other measures of prophylaxis, well known to sanitarians, are sufficient for the prevention of cholera epidemics, and that nurses and others who necessarily come in contact with cholera patients are not likely to contract the disease if they use proper precautions with reference to their food and