WILL RID THE RACE OF DISEASE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 55, 26 August 1911, Page 10

WILL RID THE RACE OF DISEASE.

GREAT 1)1,SCO VERY OF A BRITISH SURCKOX. Two or three years ago there appeared ill the papers an article dealing with Sir Almroth Wright's Opsonic treatment, which it was claimed would develop into a svstem that could be successfully applied to every forni of disease,. Then it was predicted by medical men that the future held great promise for the system. In tlie years that have since elapsed tin! great scientist has been working tirelessly in a London hospital, and today lie has brought the method to such a stage that every enlightened doctor, surgeon and dentist ill Great Britain is acquainted with the general outlines of it, and, according to an authority, nothing is wanting to make the British race the healthiest in the world but a reorganisation and extension of the present hospital system. The Opsonic cure is to-day known as "Immunisation." No drugs arid no surgical operations are necessary; and, what is still more wonderful the disease can be detected long before any symptoms of it are perceived l>y the ordinary physician. A drop of blood, is taken from the finger of a patient. This is examined under a powerful microscope, and if a microbe is found to be the cause of the disease the microbe is allowed to grow and multiply. It is then killed and preserved in little air-tight tubes. When the patient returns for treatment, some of his own dead microbes are injected into him. This cures him! There is 110 pain; no discomfort; no inconvenience; and in some cases the cure is

rapid. The theory is partly built on Professor MetchnikofFs discovery of the function of the white corpuscles of the blood, which Lord Lister hailed as the most romantic chapter in the history of medicines. The white corpuscles are tiny animals of a very low type that breed in the marrow of our bones and live in our blood and tissues. They destroy foreign substances that enter our system, and the smaller sort of them feed on the bacteria which infect our bodies. In short, the white corpuscles are really the guardians of our health. They perform in our blood the same office as a related species perform in the soil—that of keeping down the bacteria. Professor Metchnikoff's discoveries were made many years ago; but for a long time no advance of importance in curative treatment resulted from them. This was partly due to the fact that Metchnikoff unwittingly exaggerated the powers of the white corpuscles. He thought that they were able to consume the murderous bacteria by their own strength. Experiments, however, showed that this was not so. A new school of scientists then arose who held that the work of destruction was carried out by certain chemical elements in the fluids of the blood.

Such was the state of things when Sir Almroth Wright took up the problem. By a series of new and ingenious tests ho proved that neither the white corpuscles nor the fluids of the blood could, singly, defeat the microbes of disease. He found out that in any healthy person who was able to resist infection there was a strange power in his blood which acted on the mischief-making microbe in such a way as to make it easily digestible by the white corpuscles. This strange power is called the "opsonic" power of the blood (from the Latin word opsono—l cater for). Continuing his experiments, ho ascertained that no drug or surgical operation could increase the opsonic power of a patient. On the other hand, certain old-fashioned and new-fangled ways of treatment, such as massage and'light rays and X-rays applications, brought about at times an addition to the opsonic power of n patient. How did they?

The bacteria are congregated in a certain part of the body, causing pain and disorder. By some forms of massage, natural or artificial, the germs are dispersed about the system. So the whole system becomes infected? Sometimes, hut not always; for, by this means, extraordinary as it is, the patient in favorable cases vaccinates himself! Now we have reached the central feature in the system of immunisation. We have seen how a natural cure is effected. Itis what takes place when we recover from a bad cold. The old school of doctors used to say that the disease had worked its way through the system, and there was some truth in the saying, The white corpuscles and the "opso-* inn" in the blood form practically the sole machinery of defence which a man possesses against the invisible hosts of death. Up to the present, mankind has managed witli great pain to-continue to exist by a process of. 1 aelf'vacqinatioii. Hut the drrtgs men'took itdv'er did more than palliate the natural processes of recovery or decline.

In no disease of bacteriological origin —and nearly all diseases are of this kind —is there any real recovery unless the protective machinery of the body has been so used as to defeat the attack of the invajling germs. The natural method of cure, however, is, slow and painful and uncertain.

As is well known, Pasteur discovered 1 llit( ; b >' ardent, in 1879, the methods of presenting- hydrophobia by inoculating the patient with an attenuated dose of the living microbe. The great Frenchman ascertained a practical way of driving this terrible poison out of the body, but he was unable to work out the general principles of bacterial 'medicine. « \ ''

" It was givejl to Sit Almroth Wright to the ideas of ■ Pksteur, and to develop them 'in such a manner as to make man at last master of the secret armies of disease.