NON-POISONOUS VACCINE

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 298, 12 September 1919, Page 7

NON-POISONOUS VACCINE

-——■-? . AN IMPORTANT ADVANCE. Great interest Ims been created among medical inui by the discovery of Captain David Thoiuauii, M.D., of the Military Hospital, Koolieoter Mow, that vaccines for infectious, discuses can be effectively deprived of their toxins, or poisons, by a process which he has described in the "Lancet." "If tho results are confirmed by fur- < ther investigations,"' 6aid a medical officer of health, "we are well on the road to the prevention and cure of most infectious diseases." Sneaking to a representative of tho "Dailv Mail," Dr. Thomson, with the modestv of tho true scientist, said: "Wb must not expect miracles from this discovery, but it seems to mo that ; it is a step in the right direction, and at anv rate it opens up a new field for : research. Our Jcnoivledgo of immunity, m- security from infection by disease eerais. is slowly but surely advancing, and bacteriologists believe that some day thev will bo.able to do wonderful things in tho prevention and cure of infectious diseases. "When vaccines were, first used groat things were expected of them, but disappointment followed. Vaccines are very poisonous, and so far we have been unable to inieot really large doses. It seems obvious that more immunity should result from a large than from a small dose of'vaccine, and modern researches have strenfcthened this belief. "The method 1 described removes the toxins effectively from'all the germs with which I have so far experimented." Influenza Prevention. "Now that we have a Ministry of Health, unstinted as to money,'" writes a medical correspondent, "we ara justified in exnectiiiK that such a discovery as that of Dr. Thomson should be fully and immediately investigated. We may have another destructive outbreak of influenza nest winter. Drugs have proved almost valueless in this disease, and our oii'y hope lies in a vaccine which can be used in large enough quantity to confer protection."