Reading for Everybody.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2431, 20 February 1909, Page 10 (Supplement)

Reading for Everybody.

VACCINATION FOR TYPHOID FEVER. A NEW SUCCESS IN MEDICAL SCIENCE. (By Reno Bac'he, in the Now Orleans c ( Times-Dcmoo rat.”-) fHavo you been, vaccinated lor typhoid? v Vi not it is fairly safe to say that will bo before very long. It is a new method, by which people are rendered immune to the dreadful malady, and marks a long step ahead in the progress of medical science. Hitherto the light against typhoid has been wholly defensive. From this time on it is to be offensive. The malady is to be disarmed of its terror by making people immune to its attacks. tlie means employed being substantially the same as those used in the case of small-pox. ' .Both the British and the German Governments have taken the matter up in earnest, and in laboratories especially equipped for the purpose, are putting up thousands of doses of typhoid vaccine in little glass tubes. Eight thousand German soldiers and 7000 English soldiers have already been inoculated, the facilities afforded for such experiments on large numbers of men under military discipline, being exceptionally good. For one thing, which is of obvious importance, the per.-Otis treated can be kept under 'Y close observation. PREPARATION. OF VACCINE. The vaccine is prepared in a very simple way by propagating the bacilli of typhoid in beef broth. In the nutritutious fluid they multiply with great rapidity, and, when there are enough of them, they are killed by beat. As a result, there is a quantity of soup containing multitudes of dead typhoid germs. This is the vaccine. 1 In order to make sure that all the germs are dead, a few drops of the , broth are introduced int-o a fresh batch of beef soup, which has been sterilised. If any typhoid bacilli develop, the stuff must be thrown away, of course. But if the process has been properly performed, the disease microbes will be ail dead, and so can do nobody any harm. Their dead bodies, however, contain a specific active prig, ciple, .which gives to the vaccine its peculiar efficacy. GIVING THE DOSE. Thus prepared, the fluid is put into the little glass tubes (previously sterilised), which arc sealed with a blow- £ pipe. Being made this way hermetjcaily tight, each receptacle contains nothing whatever save broth and dead typhoid bacilli. Of the latter there arc about 60,000,000 to the drop. The doses pub up in this fashion arc eight drops a first inoculation, and fifteen drops for a second inoculation. When the dose is given, of course, the tube containing it bas to be broken. Then its contents are drawn into an ordinary hypodermic syringe (steri. 'i-ed), and with tins instruinent intro- i luccd beneath the skin of the person treated. There is nothing particularly k painful about it. Tlie patient bas, a arm for a few days—not more than a week—owing to local irritation by the typhoid inoculation, aud there is a slight rise in temperature, with a cling of languor and malaise. ' That is all. The local swelling is not so bad as that which follows vaccination for small-pox, and the malaise soon passes away. As a result, however, the person treated is rendered immune to typhoid fever —presumably for the rest of his life. He cannot catch the disease, no matter what the exposure may be. Water or food affected with typhoid bacilli will no longer have anv dangers for him. ' A CURIOUS EFFECT. One very curious effect of vaccination for typhoid is that it renders tlie scrum (the watery part of the blood of the person treated), poisonous to typhoid germs. If some blood be drawn from’his veins, and allowed to stand in . a suitable- receptacle until tlie 'red corpuscles have sunk to the bottom, leaving the transparent serum on top, then the latter may bo poured off and used to kill living typhoid bacilli. Just why .this should be '•U so nobody can say with certainty, but ,u serves very well to illustrate tlie tßemarkable effect of the vaccine in . rendering the * human body proof against typhoid. This kind of inoculation seems to put a man in the same condition as lie would be alter recovery from typhoid fever, without obliging him to go through the discomforts and dangers of the illness. That is to say/fhe (*j) joys the suinc protection stains future attacks of the disease, which is + practically absolute. He is henceforth immune. Occasionally people do have tvphoid more than once in their lives, but such a tiling is extremely 1& Now while there is not the slightest doubt ’of the effect, nobody knows with certainty how it is produced. Iho bacilli contained in the vaccine hat ing been killed, the poison in their dead bodies is'an active immunising agent. But how does it act? it is a question that no one can answer with su ion ess } though there are a good many tiicor-->s Of these theories one of the newest, and perhaps the best-accepted, i s that of a German scientist named THE GOVERNING NUCLEUS. The idea on which this theory o Ehrlich is based is that every cell in tlie human organism has a “governing nucleus.” Every cell possesses a brain and a body. The body must be fed and, unfortunately for us, it will readily take up poisons in hen of food— substances, that is to say, which, instead of sustaining it, injure it. It may even be destroyed by such moans. But, if not destroyed, it will repair itself. Nature, in mending a 'broken bone, supplies more bone-stuff than is actually needed. It is the same way with the cells. "When a cell suffers damage, it produces an excess of repair stuff, which is an antidote to the poison that has done the mischief, and serves to kill off the hostile germs. I his is what happens when a person recovers lom an attack of typhoid or any other disease. Such recovery means simply that the cells of the body have developed an anti-poison, and with it have routed the enemy. , Incidentally to the process, the cells form a habit of procuring tins particular antidote; and, accordingly, wiien disease germs of the same kind at- >,. s tempt another attack, even though it ‘ in ay be many years later, they are

not able to secure a aud the person is not made sick. This, according to the theory now provisionally accepted,, is the true significance of that condition which is termed immunity. The belief at present entertained is that the typhoid vaccine teaches the cells of the body, without sickness, to manufacture the antidote against poisoning. It is exactly the same idea that is applied in the case of vaccination for smallpox. In that treatment, originated by the immortal Jenueiy a microbe (of cowpox) nearly related to that of smallpox is employed to accomplish the education of the cells—the result being that they get into the habit of forming anti-poison which is deadly to the smallpox germ, ■and which prevents the latter from gaining a foothold. ANTHRAX AND RABIES.

The same method of treatment has been applied with great success at tlie instance of Pasteur to anthrax (splenic fever) in sheep. It is also pursued for rabies, thanks to the discovery by the same eminent contributor to science. Haff'kins, au Englishman in the employ of the East Indian Government, has introduced a like mode of dealing with both cholera and bubonic plague. The treatment of typhoid by such means was originated by Sir A. M. Wright, a distinguished 1 physician of London. In. all these cases the theory and treatment are substantially the same. The aim is produce an artificial instead of a .natural immunity. Unless all signs fail, the day is coining beiorc long when vaccination for the prevention of many of the most deadly maladies to which human flesh is heir to will be practised. Efforts are being made to apply the same idea to tuberculosis, and so far as they arc concerned the treatment appears to be very successful. The same method, however, does not work satisfactorily with human beings. It is easy enough to prepare a vaccine by propagating the bacilli of tuberculosis in beef broth and then killing them by heat; but, unfortunately, when the stuff is used dor inoculation the dead microbes seem to be just about as dangerous as live ones.

The bacillus of bovine tuberculosis being much more virulent than that which 'attacks human beings, it is round exceedingly convenient to utilise the latter for inoculating cattle. This "treatment corresponds after a fashion to the use of cowpox germs to prevent smallpox, and might be said to constitute a fair return to our friend the cow for her important contribution to the welfare of mankind. But what seems .to be very badly wanted, for ourselves, is a tuberculoids microbe milder than the human type, which may be safely and satisfactorily employed as a weapon against the white plague, the most destructive of all human maladies, which kills 1-50,000 people in tlie United Slates alone every year. The bacteriologists are eagerly hunting for n bacillus, and hope to find it. As yet this new method of preventive treatment may be said to be in its infancy, though, it must he remembered, of course, that its application to smallpox dates back a long time. It is only beginning to be developed, and tlie theory on which it is based is even now hut imperfectly understood. Apparently it has a wonderful future before it, promising many benefits to the human race. At the present stage it is only in an experimental stage, although it has been employed-with sudden and astonishing effects for the cure of acne (pimples) and other skin diseases, in cases of long standing which had obstinately resisted medical attack for many years.

THE ROMANCE OF GREAT BUSINESS HOUSES.

“It is no exaggeration to say that four out of five of the greatest business houses in the world have been cradled in poverty and obscurity.” So said one of our great kings of commerce the other day, and tho statement is as true as it is remarkable. MARSHALL FIELD’S MILLIONS. Fifty years or so ago the great Chicago store out of which the late .Marshall Field made his millions had its very modest beginning in a tiny Lake Street shop, in which Mr Field himself sold pins and tape over tOio counter. A few years earlier he had been driving a plough in his father’s fields on the bank of the Hudson, as a preliminary to doing clerk’s work in a Durham store, and it was jyith the few hundred dollars thus saved that the Lake Street shop was stocked. To-day the business thus cradled is the largest retail! shop in tho woh’d, occupying a block more than a Fundred yards square, with a floor area of thirty-six acres. It tbo-asts a single sales room of 135,000 square feet, is visited daily by over 100,000 customers, and yields a round million pounds a year in net profit. WANAMAKER AND ROUSS.

■The great department stores of Mr Wianamaker, in New York and Philadelphia, are the gigantic development of a smaill clothier’s shop which. £4OO would have bought outright forty years ago, when Mr AYanamaker. who had been glad to commence his working life by earning a dollar and <a half a week as an errand-boy, first put his modest savings into a venture of his own, little dreaming tliat they were to be tho nucleus of millions. And Mr C. .13. Rouss, the blind millionaire, started, in a single room rented at -a dollar a day, the. gigantic business in New York which has now an annual turnover of £3,000,060. HOW RRUPP’S HOSE.

Tlie world-famous Krupp steelworks, which to-day employ 40,000 men and yield a not revenue of £!.,-• 000,000 a year to their fortunate owner, derive their origin from a village blacksmith’s shop, in which the grandfather of their present owner plied hammer and bellows for a pound or two a week; and the great Armstrong manufacturing works at Els-w-ick, which employ over 25,000 hands at wages of £40,000 a week, are the outgrowth of a very small factory on Tyneside. BASIS’S AND SMITH’S. ■ The founders of the great firm of Bass, which supplies to thirsty humanity over a million and a half barrels of ale every year, was a Staffordshire barrier, who thought his fortune made when he turned brewer and supplied his neighbors -with a few dozen barrels a month. 'The nursery of the mammoth business of Messrs W. Id. 'Smith and Son, which distributes 360,000,000 papers a year and supports an army of over 8.000 workers, was a tiny newspaper shop in the Strand, where its founder, in his shirt-sleeves, might have been seen at four o'clock any weekday morning .packing newspapers.

THE START OF P.IGKEORD’S AN!) FRY’S.

Less than a century ago a pioneer Bickford was running a van between Manchester and Loudon, covering the journey >in the then wonderful t time of four days and a half. The original Fry, of cocoa fame, employed barely a dozen men in his small factory in Newgate (Street, Bristol. Today his successors keep 4,400 pairs of hands busy and have a capital of £1,500,000. The Cadbury cocoa business was cradled less than two generations ago, in a small! Birmingham shop; and the gigantic industries controlled by Sir Christopher Furness had their nursery behind the counter of a provision dealer’s shop. Air Lever's gigantic soap business had its", source in a grocer's shop in Bolton; Air Thomas Cook, of tourist celebrity, was a journeyman printer when die first struck the road to fortune by cheapening facilities for travel ; and Mr Thomas (Beecham sold his first box of pills from a fish-tub stall ip the market-place oi St. Helens.