INOCULATION AND IMMUNITY

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 267, 1 February 1928, Page 10

INOCULATION AND IMMUNITY

THE death of twelve children in Bundaberg following inoculation against diphtheria has caused a wave of public sympathy to flow toward Queensland. The tragedy, so far, is inexplicable, although Sir Neville Howse and other health officials in the Commonwealth are taking steps to clear up the mystery which one medical man has described as “the most terrible calamity that has ever occurred, so far as I know, in medical science.” It is certain that there will be many who, in view of this disastrous mishap, will condemn the whole system of toxinantitoxin inoculation as a preventive measure against diphtheria. Such criticism, when we review the statistics covering the incidence of the disease, and its cure, is to be deplored. Diphtheria has proved a formidable foe for medical science to conquer, but that it has been conquered has been established beyond a doubt. Klebs first discovered the bacillus of the disease in 1883 and a few years later Yersin and Roux, of the Pasteur Institute, obtained a pure toxin. In the Pasteur Institute 2,029 children, of 3,971 admitted, had died from diphtheria. In four months Roux, with his serum, reduced deaths by 24 per cent., whereas, in an adjacent hospital, the mortality rate was 60 per cent. The next step was the mixture of a little antitoxin with the toxin to produce immunity against the disease, and this has been used in millions of eases without the slightest harmful result. The author of “The Conquest of Disease,” writing of modern inoculation methods in the prevention of diphtheria, says:— Seeking to protect 10.000 children against the disease, two New York medical men made the necessary injections which are designed to stimulate the blood of the' child to create that antitoxin which gives him as much protection as though his throat were covered with an armour plate. Twelve weeks after 8,000 of them had been treated their blood had clothed them in the Magic Mantle of Immunity. Henceforward they could laugh at Diphtheria. Over a million children have been tested in England and America and a great proportion of these young citizens have been immunised. New Zealand and Australia have followed, with eminently successful results, the methods which have been approved by leaders in medical research in the older countries of the world. The distressing tragedy at Bundaberg has presumably been caused by some unprecedented irregularity and it is sincerely to be hoped that the nature of that irregularity will be disclosed. In the meantime it may be well to quote an authoritative and reassuring medical opinion on the subject of inoculation: “If every child were given the Schick test and the necessary injections not another case of diphtheria should occur in the world.”