Antiscarlatinal serum of dual potency.

Abstract

The question of the complex nature of hemolytic streptococcus antiserum has been studied since the time of Van deVelde, 1 Marmorek 2 and others.

Protective power was early demonstrated. Antitoxic powers were also demonstrated broadly for the scarlet fever strains by Moser, 3 Savchenko 4 and others, and were recently made clear cut by the work of Dochez 5 and of the Dicks. 6

Realizing that a serum having the power to protect against the living culture, as well as, to neutralize the toxin, might have advantages over a strictly antitoxic serum, we have been inoculating several of our horses by what must be called a modified Moser method. The modifications have been learned by our work on diphtheria antitoxin and antipneumococcus serum, that is, that a protective serum is obtained most easily by the repeated inoculation of the whole killed culture into the vein, and that the antitoxin serum is obtained by the repeated inoculation of toxin subcutaneously.

We inoculated the killed whole washed cultures intravenously and the Buchner filtrates of a six day growth in blood bouillon subcutaneously. Cultures of the filtrates showed 100 colonies of the streptococcus to the cc.

One of the horses we inoculated in this way, No. 86, has been under treatment for nine months. The others for much shorter times.

The inoculations into this horse were started on January 15th 1925, by giving the whole centrifuged 24 hour broth cultures intravenously. Two days later the Buchner filtrate of a six day blood broth culture was started subcutaneously. The doses were continued on alternate days and were gradually increased. In about 3 months the serum began to show blanching in the Schultz Charlton test.