Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 69.djvu/244

240 In the vaccinated animals, on the contrary, the introduction of the mammalian bacilli at once gives rise to a marked degree of irritation. From the second to the fifth day the vessels of the conjunctiva become engorged, and evidences of marked inflammation appear in the anterior chamber and on the iris (reaction of immunity). However, at the end of the second to the third week, when the eyes of the controls begin to show progressive and steadily increasing evidence of inflammatory reaction, the irritation in those of the vaccinated animals begins slowly to subside and the eyes to mend. In from six to twelve weeks, in the successful cases, all irritation has disappeared and the eyes present only the evidences of traumatism and inflammation. This experiment leaves no doubt of the protective influence exerted by the first inoculations of the avian bacilli and clearly establishes that related cultures of tubercle bacilli of moderate virulence for an animal species, can afford protection to subsequent inoculation with special and more pathogenic strains of the bacillus. Notwithstanding the fact that, as Dr. Trudeau records, some of the protected animals slowly relapse and the disease resumes its progress, although by almost imperceptible stages, the experiment still shows that protection, not absolute immunity, from tuberculosis may be obtained in rabbits by a species of vaccination.

De Schweinitz in 1894 reported certain experiments which he made on guinea-pigs and cattle. He inoculated the former with a culture of tubercle bacilli of human origin cultivated for about twenty generations in broth. This culture was of a low grade of virulence for these animals, but it served to protect them to such an extent that when they were afterwards inoculated with tuberculous material from a cow they remained healthy, while control pigs injected with the same material became tuberculous and succumbed in about seven weeks. De Schweinitz injected large quantities of human tubercle bacilli into cattle—beneath the skin, into the peritoneal cavity and into the circulation—without injury.

I may, at this time, digress for a moment and leave the more strictly chronological method of presentation, to allude to the set of experiments on the protection of guinea-pigs from tuberculosis, which Trudeau reported to the National Tuberculosis Association at its last meeting. The special merit of this experiment is that it shows the existence of a connection between virulence and infectivity in the germ and its capacity to confer immunity. Unless the bacillus has the power to gain some foothold in the body it affords no protection; if on account of high pathogenic power or virulence, it easily gains a foothold, then it brings about infection. To choose a culture of tubercle bacilli of just the right grade of virulence is one of the conditions, apparently, of successful experiment, as it must also be, in view of this fact, one