Protective inoculation against cholera.

  • Haffkine, W. M. (Waldemar Mordecai), 1860-1930.
Date:
1913
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Protective inoculation against cholera. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    d'Eberth, notamment des bacilles de passages, Comiotes-rendus, Societe de Biologic de Paris, 2nd and 16th December 1905. THE CHOLERA VACCINES. Vaccine II. It was a virus in live condition, brought hy the above described procedure of successive cultivations in guinea-pigs to a uniform and stable degree of virulence, such as is obtained in small-pox vaccine lymph by cultivation in the calf, that I designated, in 1892, following the example of Jenner and Pasteur, the cholera vaccine; and, for reasons mentioned below, I referred to it as cholera vaccine II. The subcutaneous inoculation of an appro- priate dose of this vaccine protected the guinea-pig, the pigeon, the rabbit and the dog against all such forms of infection with cholera virus as, without previous immunization, were fatal to them. The results were thus found to apply to several species of animals— mammals and birds—which appeared susceptible to the same process of immunization. Later on Dr. R. Strong confirmed the similarity in this respect between the rabbit and the guinea-pig, while R. PfeifFer and Friedberger showed that this similarity extended also to goats (Weitere Beitrage zur Theorie der bakteriolytiscben Immunitat, Centralblatt fur Bahteriologie, 1, Vol. XXXIV, No. I, 1903). Considering that the differences of organization between various mammals, including man, are less than those between mammals and birds, the possibility of the conclusions extending also to man was rendered by these facts more plausible than it would otherwise have been. Cholera Vaccine I. The hypodermic injection into the guinea-pig of the cholera vaccine proper mortifies, as already mentioned, the skin at the seat of the injection and leaves an open wound, which becomes, however, regularly covered with granulations and heals up without suppurating. To prevent the formation of this wound I prepared, by a process which it is now unnecessary to describe in detail, an attenuated