The process of immunization is confessedly a complex one. If effected through the agency of the antibodies (defensive agents) found in the healthy blood and tissue cells of the sound animal body charged with the duty of protect ing the body when assaulted by the poisons (toxins) produced by the invading microbe (of which a large number have been identified and named), also by bodies that tend to devitalize and destroy the invading microbe, the case is simplified somewhat. These defensive products, in small amount at first, go on increasing in quantity and potency as the disease progresses, and, in favorable cases, the patient recovers. The body and tissue cells having passed through this extraordinary stimulus to produce these defensive products in excess, continue the same work indefinitely (sometimes for life) and protect the system from any new attack. If on the contrary the invading organism is too potent, or the system is too feeble to react sufficiently, the victim is doomed and perishes.
We see the working of this defensive re action in all the lesser physical ailments and injuries which have not been habitually classi fied as contagious. This protective power im planted at birth is really the great healer, and the surgeon is condemned to stand by as an assistant, soothing by quiet rest, a suitable posi tion or support and checking infections that fall on the wound, while the body itself per forms the cure through granulating tissue and perhaps with earthy salts (as in broken bones) drawing together the gash in the skin, firmly knitting the broken bone, etc. It was in such surgical cases that the auto-cure by the de fensive powers of the body for long main tained its highest reputation, largely because the seat of the trouble could be so thoroughly reached by non-irritating antiseptics, but in too many cases it is prudent to see that the potent powers of the defensive cells against microbian invasions should be no less availed of. Before the days of self-immunization as a medical weapon it was familiar to see poll evils and fistulas of the shoulder, withers and elsewhere persisting for many months, often fed by con tinuous additions of infection from local sources, which to-day would recognize the potency of nature's healer and of the pus dis charge from the open sore (sterilized). So, too, when pus infection from an unseen source keeps up a constant succession of pustules, boils and other surface suppurations, the auto-cure will often restore the balance and strongly contribute to a recovery.. In foot and mouth disease, cowpox and vesicular sore mouth, of approximately the same period of incubation and duration, and equally mild and non-fatal, the auto-cure is plainly invited. No high mor tality demands slaughter. There are always a few days' delay before such cases are reported; with a large herd a few days are needed to prepare for burial; the disease has meanwhile reached its height, and, left to itself, recovery would soon have been far advanced. Nothing is to be gained by killing—not even time; the heating of the saliva for half an hour to 212° F. in a suitable apparatus will insure sterilization so that, in the absence of all living germs, it can be used with full confidence of safety, and even in other diseases (spore-forming), and therefore liable to infect premises and soil, it is only necessary that the virus shall be sub jected to repeated heatings with intervals of 12 to 24 hours to allow for the sprouting of the spores to form microbes, and a sterilized product is obtained.
A list of the more common contagious dis eases is here given, indicating their adaptability or otherwise to the employment of autotherapy: (1) Cattle pests too contagious and fatal to admit safe autotherapy: Rinderpest, canine madness, chronic bovine dysentery (Johne's disease). For these the cheapest, safest and
most effective resort is to stop any movement whatever of animals of any kind within a very large area around the herds known to be in fected, to kill the infected herds, to burn or bury the carcasses and products and to thor oughly disinfect the premises, pastures, etc.
(2) Cattle pests in which the germs are pre served in dead tissues of the living body, caseated or pus products, etc., to spread the malady after recovery: Lung plague, calf diph theria, tuberculosis, gangrenous coryza (cold in the head), catarrh of the nasal sinuses, caseated lymph glands, anthrax, foot rot. In these autotherapy should be used only under careful restriction and good judgment. Cattle pests in which the germs survive nitely in air, earth or water, to spread t affection later: Anthrax, black leg, tetanus (lockjaw). In these the cattle operated on are likely to prove immune, but susceptible animals coming on the lands later, by birth or from outside, are liable to suffer and start.a new outbreak Here autotherapy protects the ani mals on the ground, but efficiency demands quarantine, drainage (drying the land), and, for a length of time, seclusion of the area from other live stock. (4) Cattle pests that are not self-limiting (self-immunizing). Here the disease may show itself a second time in animals treated by autotherapy and may spread to other susceptible or new-born animals, the beginning of a fresh outbreak: Poll evil, fis tulous withers, foot rot, chronic tuberculosis, deep-seated pus pockets having no sufficient dependent outlet, chronic intermittent bovine dysentery disease), cancer, actinomy cosis, etc., which, like syphilis in man or glan ders in the horse, may persist for months or years in the same animal and steadily infect others. The danger of such a disease is sel dom clearly appreciated by the owner because the animal spreading it appears to suffer so little. But in such chronic cases the germ carrier has become largely immune or the deadly germ would have cut him off long before, and his individual invulnerability gives him a long opportunity to spread the germ he bears, and thus to become incomparably more destructive to other and more vulnerable sub jects. By this means such splendidly benefi cent enterprises as Pasteur's method of im munizing and saving the life of the already infected victim of hydrophobia has, for lack of necessary accompanying precautions, appar ently become the means of preserving and spreading the germ of this most deplorable affection to which man and beast are so gen erally susceptible. From 1868 to 1878 and later mad dogs and hydrophobic men were alike unknown in central New York, while since the Pasteur laboratory was established mad dogs been common through the country as they were earlier in New York city, and there has been no lack of human patients at the laboratory. The same is true of France, the country made famous by Pasteur's skill. The Pasteur laboratories have failed to ex tirpate mad dogs or to save people from their bites and canine and human victims have been plentiful in France, while in Great Britain, Australia and other nations, where effective muzzling of dogs is secured, mad dogs and candidates for hydrophobia treatment are alike unknown. It is for the objector to explain why. It is not for us to abolish at once the Pasteur laboratory, but to see that its patients are not allowed to leave the institution and mingle with the general public immediately on completion of the series of injections of the living germ and while that microbe is still alive in their systems. It is equally essential that the strict muzzling of all dogs be enforced (not simply placed on the statute books) until long after the last case of hydrophobia has been effectually disposed of.