Norwich bulletin., 1915-01-12
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Immunity A-ainst Scarlet Fever.


 0 talk nowdays. when we have sU many scarlet fever cases in our sur roundings-three children of my own household are exposed to it also especially Cliff and High streets, etc., of course with the probable pernlis- sion Of our highly spirited and elegant health officer, Dr. LeWis-about those dangerous means of being the ways of infection by the SO-called StreptOcOcCi,
 which are the real instigators of the only dangerous disease, scarlet fever. l say only dangerous, because there
 arc no other maladies Of our up-to- date seculum which we should be
 afraid for. Not at all! The germs of cholera, typhoid, dysentery. diDhtheria,
 ,etanus, ,hydrophObia are under con-
 trol of the laboratory man. We can
 handle those germs just as well as tho circus man handles his beasts, and if we do not lose our heads and cour age vel mean the bacteriologists-- are able to joke with them, to play with them and to kill them any time
 we want to. The famous Pettenkoffe of Munich Bavaria has been eating cholera and typhoid bacilI with the anne appetite as we eat in Norwich apples and pruneS, and he did that "A years ago! What great, mighty progress was made ever since. I mean on the brilliant way to se- curing of the highest immunity against the most dreadful diseases. We handle the vaccines, antitoxins, serums, tuber- culins, etc, with such strong hand as General von Hindenburg the Rus sian hordes and their insects and danger breeding 1ives-tle Asiatic cholera, the astis, the leprosy, they are all delivered through Russians. The breeding place of scarlet fever is l the kaukaSus. Certain animals of that section of the world are exceIlently in- mune against it, because we find the strongest streptocOcci there. Proba- l bly as soon as they are tranSplanted to the United States they lose their virulence. You probably noticed it, that the present scarlet fever epidemic is not so vehement as it was two years ago in the eastern states, be- cause the great warriors do not let that the germs are kept there.
 By immunity in general is meant n-SusceDubiHtv to a given disease i or to a given organism or toxin, either under natural conditions or under con- l diCiOns eXperimentaliy produced. I'm munity is in fact. of widely varying ] degrees and has cOrresp spOndingly rela- I tive significance. So lone as ar oF- { SanlSn continues to exist 1t must ] continue to adapt itself to it's environ ment, and thus 1t becomes so modified l as to effeCtually resist influences which without such modification would have 1 brought cessation of being. The lower animals are immune to some diseases I GN GAISA1L III Illct3is anu CGILd1u ldIllIlGS 1 have marked resistance to some dis l eases There are examples of natural l immunity. An individual may be inn mune by virtue Of his being of a cer- i tain race or family. Classic is the observation, on the other hand, that l one attack of certain infectious disease { affords lifelong immunity against at 1 tackS of the same disease, while in 1 other diseases the acquired immunity l is of varying duri jon. We can pro- q ! or passive. Vaccination or the injec- l tion of bacterial toxins produces active l immunity while the injection of an inn ] munlzing serum, such as dfphtheTia l antitoXin, confers passive immunity In 1 other words, in first instance the pa 1 tlent supplies his own antibodies- active immunity-il the second in stance the antlbodies are supplied to the uatient-passiVe immunity.
 l IT. active immunity, following recov- 1 cry from either an idiopathic infection 1 or an infection aTtificially produced. l there are developed in the blood the l antibodies which are inimical to the | toxin or to the activity of the bacteria i themselves, or which accoTn nlsh the 1 destruction of the causative agent by l the action Of the phagocytes (the sol- ! diers, but CourageOus soldiers, of tf1e l body). The normal blood serum has 1 a powerful destructive effect upon many varieties of bacteria, and this power is found to be greatly increased ] in a patient who has been Infected 1 with these bacteria, either naturally or artificiaIly. There can be no doubt i that in all cases of acquired immunity ] either active or passive, the lencoCytes l the white blood GelIs) perform a large and important part just as they do in 1 natural immunity. Ill acquired inn 1 munity the phagocytes are much more l capable of absorbing or destroying | bacteria than in susceptible conditions.
 In cases of scarlet fever the Iencocytes must be in perfect strength to stand l the attacks of the Streptococci, which are the most powerful bacteria of the whole gern1icidal carnoaign,
 1 No measles, no whooping cough, no pneumonia, lricroorganisnns can beat i them. For that only reason we are 1 still afraid of them, but we have against them, 12 or 24 hours after they l entered the organism, the horse serum I--the streptococciC seruun-and this, to l the most powerful serum we have in modern medicipe-no more general in lection, no more septhchaemia, no more killing nowadayS-We have the guns against them. as the Germans the hoWitzerS. Before the ad- lvancing guards of the streptccocci ap- pear on the horizon we can use against them different kinds of ger1nicidaI dis infectantS very succesSfully--as we lusualIy do it against the acrobic germs. The human body should be protected they the best, helping friends of the cci-caIonael-that's the best gunpowder. S +. KLEIN. M. D.. Ph. D.,
 Pathologist Norwich State Hospital
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