The San Francisco call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1895-1913, 1895-03-21
IMPORTING THE
REAL DIPHTHERIA.
THE STATE BOARD OF HEALTH
PREPARING TO MAKE ANTI
TOXINE..
TO BUY GOOD HORSES NEXT
THE WORK WILL Be COMMENCED
AT ONCE AT THE NEW VET
Urinary COLLEGE.

| California will have homemade anti
toxine in pretty short order now. The State
Board of Health is already at work spend
ing the $1,000 given it by the Legislature
and which must last two years.
The money is to be spent and the anti
! toxine made by the new veterinary depart
ment of the State University, under the
direction of the board, and the general plan
of what is to be done is already formulated.
DIR. Winslow Anderson, vice president and
San Francisco member of the board, will
naturally be most directly concerned in the
| management of the enterprise, and he told
| yesterday what was to be done.
| 1t requires some time to make anti
toxine, and the board has first ordered a
! supply of ready-made anti-toxine from the
East, as precaution for the benefit of the
State. Several dozen walls will be here in
week or two, and will be divided among
the members of the State Board of Health
for distribution in their respective regions
when the need arises. 1t will be given
away, SO that the life-saving remedy will
cost the poorest nothing. unless the attend
ing physician adds charge for giving it.
| The $4,000 for two years is a very small
| fund, but most of the work will cost moth
ing, and this manufacture ON large scale
is not necessary for California. The Legis-
| lature simply substituted the money for
anti-toxine that was paid for lawyer for
the board and would not give any more.
DR.. Anderson says that it will save thous-
ands of lives in California in time and in
ten years it ought to stamp out the disease.
California is the first State in the Union
to take up the manufacture and giving
| of fha, Il ,,1I,+
York it is being done by the city. which APP
propriated 10000 for the Board of Health
there.
The first actual step in preparing for the
work of making anti-toxine has been done.
The board has under way from both DIR.
Behring's laboratory in Germany and DR..
Roux's in Paris supply of the pure toxine
cultures. This stuff is not the remedy,
but the pure diphtheria poison itself. 1t is
both the Loffler's baciili, the cause of
diphtheria. and the toxines or the poison
they produce. These cultures have been
tested there in guinea pigs and are war
ranted to produce first-class diphtheria
and to be absolutely free from any other
microbes. This poison is to be used in
giving diphtheria, and nothing else, to the
horses from whose blood the anti-toxine
will be taken.
The French and German cultures will be
kept distinct for experiment. There will
from each place and there will be enough
to use on four horses
The next thing, according to DIR. Ander-
sons plans, will be to buy three or four
healthy horses in the prime of young life,
and the veterinary professors will be COM
petent to pick out sound animals. Then
there must be place to keep them. That
will be model stable from a hygienic
standpoint. 1t will probably. be in some
convenient suburban place DR.. Bowhill,
dean of the college faculty, will be the
chief actual worker and superintendent of
processes.
" hen the stable, horses and toxines are
ready the horses will be inoculated with
the poison in weak or attenuated form.
In the horses blood the natural process of
nature recently discovered will begin at
once. The horses blood will begin to de-
velop the resistant property called anti
toxine. In a short time a stronger iniec-
ton of poison will be given and the anti
toxine will develop more strength. The
process will be repeated for three or four
months, when the horses blood will resist
any quantity of Loff1er's bacteria and their
poisons. The horse will be ''immune" and
his blood will have developed its highest
power of immunity. The diphtheria bacilli
will be harmless in that fortified blood A
little of this blood will at once do the same
work in the human system.
1t took six months to work horses
blood up to this effective degree few
months ago. Now it is done in four
months
All this time the horse will be cared for
as if he were another Ormonde In fact the
care and support of the horses will be the
most expensive thing in the whole process
When the time comes DR.. Bowhill, watched
and helped with interest by a lot of doc
tors and professors will draw between one
and two quarts of blood from the horses
oh or,d toir 10 ho 1ohl -
college at Post and Fillmore streets. When
the blood coagulates the white serum will
be drawn off, carefully protected from con-
tamination by bacteria of all kinds. This
fluid part of the blood will be the anti-toxine
without further preparation except the
possibly adding very little harmless pre-
ventive fluid. 1t will be ready for in
lection into the human being.
There will really be much to be carefully
done, however. In the first place it will be
tested on guinea pigs. Then for practical
use it will be diluted or attenuated into
different strengths, measured by cunts of
immunity" 1t will be examined and
worked with more or less with powerful
microscopes, and it will be put up in little
sterilized walls.
When the horse has given up a half gal
Ion or so of his blood for humanity he
will be weak, but with good board he will
SOON Ue all IlSuJy anu IL everything mas
worked well he will be sold for nearly as
much as he cost.
81 expect that we shall be ready to make
the first incubation in about four weeks"
said DR.. Anderson yesterday. I'VE propose
to give away the anti-toxine that the poor
est may have the benefit of it. We de-
cided that scientific veterinarian was the
one to do this work. 1t also requires an
expert bacteriologist, and DR.. Bowhill. the
dean of the faculty, is such man."