Abstract
Georgia Cooper 1 and her coworkers, working with cultures from pneumonia patients at Harlem Hospital and Bellevue Hospital, segregated Type VII from the miscellaneous group. During the past 3 years 121 patients invaded with Type VII pneumococcus have been observed at Harlem Hospital. During this period 1407 patients were admitted to the adult Pneumonia Series. The incidence of Type VII was 7.5%. The mortality among 85 cases treated without serum was 25.9%.
Serum has been employed on 17 adult patients and 2 children. It was administered for the most part until agglutinins were demonstrable by the whole blood stained slide technique. The cases were chosen when serum was available by the chance of their alternate admission to the hospital. One patient, to whom serum was administered on what was thought to be the 23rd or 24th day of her disease, came in on the 20th day of her illness, with the history of a chill and pain in the side at the onset. She was obese, had an aortic insufficiency, and had had dypsnea on effort for 2 years. She died of exhaustion. All the other patients recovered. One of those who received serum and recovered, suffered from a bacteremia which was apparently increasing prior to serum administration.
The cases are insufficient in number to establish the curative value, but they furnish suggestive evidence that adequate doses of Type VII antipneumococcic serum may have therapeutic value in patients suffering from Type VII pneumococcus pneumonia. Observation of the cases led me to believe that it was beneficial.
The lots of serum, the method of production and refinement and reactions are shown in Table I:
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