Birmingham age-herald., 1894-11-29
DISEASE WIPED AWAY.
The Lives of Forty Thousand Peo-
 pie Gan Be Saved Annually.
The Cure for Diphtheria = Recovery Is Certain If the Disease Be Attacked Within Twenty-Four Houra-Dr.
 Cyrus Edson's Views of It.
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 "There are living in the United States to-day forty thousand persons who will be dead at this time next year, if the new cure for diphtheria is not immediately prepared in sufii- cient quantities to meet the require ments of American hospitals"
 This amazing statement, coming from Dr. Cyrus Edson, famous as an Investigating scientist, and occupying the high position of commissioner of health in New York city, shows the importance of this latest of medical discoveries in the minds of medical men all over the world. Everywhere it is considered that the work of Profs. Behrens, of Berlin, and Roux, of Paris, is only second in it's value to humanity to Jcnner's discovery that vaccination with the virus from an in- fected COW would prevent smallpox.
 Like other big things-lil1e most big things-the new diphtheria cure is sim pie. Two weeks ago wrote about the way in which Dr. Edson had solved the puzzle that has been baffiing the scien- lists of crime for many years. In ten minutes he found n way of diffcren- tiating-defining between the blood of human beings and the blood of ami mals-a discovery tb1t will be of the utmost importance in future mur- der cases where it is necessary to de- termine the source of blood found upon a knife or other instrument in order to determine the guilt or innocence of the accused. Of a like simple nature is the new cure for diphtheria. The nature of the disease has long been well under stood. The presence of disease germ in the throat generates q poison which flows through the blood of the whole body. It is like the work of a meat bone in kettle of boullion. The strength of it grows and grows as it is stewed out and spread, until the whole body is impregnated with it, the whole kettle full is impregnated with the flavor and strength of the meat bone.
 This much has been understood for years. It has also been known that one attack of diphtheria from which patient was lucky enough to recover generally gave him immunity from a similar attack for several months. These facts the European scientists made note of. They put two and two together, and made up their minds , that if one attack of a disease relieved one of susceptibility to 1t again, there must be some good reason for it. The reason that at once occurred to them was that the system, which is always certain to protect itself from disease as far as its strength permits it to, generated during the first illness some property which was hostile to the poi son-the "toxine" as it is known in the case of diphtheria-and that when the patient recovered it was sign that in his case the system had been able to generate enough of the antidote--the time, or until the anti-toxine was ex- hausted, any new efforts which the disease germ might make to gain foothold in the system.
 Having established this fact to their entire satisfaction it remained for them to find some way of generating this anti-toxine artifcially, so that it could be introduced into the human system whenever the presence of diphtheria, or toxine, required 1t. In casting about for way to accomplish this they re- membered that it was impossible to increase a mans or an animals power of resistance to given poison by ad- ministering that poison in small doses at first, but constantly increasing in