SELF-INOCULATION

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 345, 4 May 1928, Page 13

SELF-INOCULATION

GAS GANGRENE BACILLUS WOMAN'S GALLANIRY One ot the most heroic episodes of the war is recalled by the death in Cannes of Miss Mary Davies, daughter of the late Sir R. H. Davies, at one time Lieutenant-Governor of the Punjab. Although her gallant act of selfinoculation with a bacillus producing gas gangrene was reported in English newspapers at the time, it did not, in the midst of so many heroic acts, receive the notice it deserved. In 1915 Miss Davies was attached to the American Hospital at Neuilly, a suburb of Paris, where Dr. Taylor, an American medical man, was investigating the cause of gas gangrene, which necessitated hundreds of amputations and frequent fatalities. Inoculated Herself Dr. Taylor had experimented upon guinea-pigs, but the dangerous test of inoculating a human being with a pure culture of the bacillus had not been attempted. It was left to Miss Davies to inoculate herself. Unknown to Dr. Taylor, who would doubtless have forbidden her to make the experiment, she gave herself two deep injections of the culture, and sent a note to the doctor asking him to come at once to make “last experiments.” As soon as Dr. Taylor arrived in answer to the summons, he gave Miss Davies the preparation of hydro-chlo-ride of quinine with which he had been working. She had furnished him with a case of uncomplicated gas gangrene indispensable for putting his remedy to an effective test, and by so doing she saved many thousands of lives, for the treatment was afterwards successfully uSed. Miss Davies was out of danger within .24 hours. She had herself seen 209 fatal cases of grangrene. and happily she lived to see the results of her j great act of sacrifice.