Immunity, Protective Inoculations in Infectious Diseases, and Serum-Therapy.

Abstract

The uppermost topic of the day is that of serum-therapy and protective inoculations. We have here a book by America's foremost bacteriologist, in which the question is impartially reviewed from a bacteriologic standpoint. The book is divided in two parts, of which the first is given to natural and acquired immunity, and the second to protective inoculations and serum-therapy. The diseases anthrax, chicken cholera, cholera, diphtheria, foot-and-mouth disease, glanders, hog cholera, hog erysipelas, hydrophobia, influenza, influenza of horses, pleuropneumonia of cattle, pneumonia, rinderpest, smallpox, swine plague, streptococcus infection, symptomatic anthrax (" black leg"), tetanus, tuberculosis, typhoid fever and yellow fever are separately treated. In regard to natural immunity, the author apparently makes good his claim to priority to the theory so well supported by Metschnikoff, of phagocytosis, but yields readily to the view that the leucocytes are probably not the principal agency in the destruction of bacteria in living tissues. Buchner's