CONSUMPTION REMEDY.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIV, Issue 4581, 2 July 1923, Page 4

CONSUMPTION REMEDY.

A MAN TO WATCH. (By H. Challinor James, in the “ Overseas Daily Mail.” “ If the work of Henry Spahlinger fai’s for lack of financial support,” said a British medical collaborator of the famous Swiss scientist, “it will be as big a tragedy for mankind as the great, war itself.” Spahlinger has spent the whole of his fortune, more than £BO,OOO in attempting to discover a remedy for humanity’s greatest scourge—tuberculosis. And pow, when he would put the finishing touches to his triumph, financial embarrassments jeopardise the whole of his life’s work. Spahlinger does not want money for himself. Proprietary concerns have offered him all he might ever need to exploit the discovery. But the production of his serum is of such a highly specialised and technical character that he feafis to entrust it to a commercial undertaking, Incalculable damage might be done by a bad 'serum. Therefore, to his great credit, he refuses to expose his fellow creatures to the risk.

Spahlinger never speaks of his discovery as a “cure.” All he will.admit is that it is the best known remedy for consumption. With the modesty of genius he conducted me over the “ wonder-house ” which constitutes his laboratory on the outskirts of Geneva. Outside and inside are living testimonies to the efficacy of his treatment. Mischievous monkeys, once in the last stages of emaciation,, chatter incessantly in the trees, while sleek-lpoking cows which have suffered from immunity the injection of sufficient bacilli to kill a whole town, graze peacefully in the meadows.

Their attendant is an Englishman, discharged from a London hospital some years ago with a week to live. He says he is now quite fit. Working in darkened rooms with their test tubes, are half a dozen assistants, all of whom owe their lives to the modest Swiss. After twelve years’ labour Spahlinger has the finest collection of tuberculosis bacilli extant. There is enough to wipe out a town in every tube, and there are thousands of tubes.

The ravages of consumption are caused not by the bacilli, but by the toxins they set up. Spahlinger has discovered a score of different toxins, which the bacilli will release only when attacked. S.o his genius has invented wierd-looking machines which oscillate, rotate, or shake the tubes containing the bacilli at different speds. Then the toxins thus secured are injected into 20 different high-bred homes, who immediately set, to.work to produce the antidote. The hoT|ses are then bled, the combined 20 antidotes forming the complete serum, which when injected into the person suffering from tuberculosis at once sets to work to neutralise the bacilli which are destroying the human be’ng.

Spahlinger is a doctor of law, not medicine; a fact responsible,.for the scepticism with which the faculty first received his discovery. But that he is a genius whose work will rank with that of Koch and Louis Pasteur many great men admit. What he is most, anxious to avoid is giving false hope to sufferers. AH the stock of serum has been exhausted in demonstrating its efficacy, and years must elapse before it can be produced on any scale.