Abstract
That a given organism either cannot be grown outside the body, or can only be grown with great difficulty and uncertainty, would appear, at first sight, to offer an insuperable obstacle to the development of any method of therapeutic vaccination, — vaccination, that is, during the course of a disease, by inoculations with the specific bacteria, or their products, — such as has been practiced by Koch in connection with tuberculosis, and by Wright to arrest suppurative and other conditions. Preeminent among microbes belonging to this category is the leprosy bacillus: the difficulties in the way of gaining adequate growths of this organism have thus far prevented the development of any bacteriotherapeutic means of treating the disease due thereto.
A possible method of overcoming the obstacle has suggested itself to me; and I am already testing it. But in Siam, the number of suitable cases presenting themselves is not great. The value of the method can only be determined by noting the results gained in a relatively considerable number of cases; hence it has seemed to me advisable to describe it in the hope that others having fuller opportunities may be induced to test the procedure and its value. My somewhat remote station is against a familiarity with the most recent literature: to my knowledge the method has not hitherto been published, and is original. The nearest approach to it, that of preventive vaccination against black-leg by means of the desiccated spore-bearing muscle tissue of a previous case, differs in many important particulars.
Briefly, it seemed to me that lacking pure cultures for the purpose, I might make the leprosy patient serve as his own culture medium. It is well known how abundant are the bacilli in the lepra nodule.
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