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Show NEW CURE FOR DIPHTHERIA. European Hospitals Practicing a Method of Blood InocuhxMon. So many thousands of children are annually carried off hy diphtheria, the sufferings caused hy the disease are so agonizing and the remedies hitherto at the disposal of the medical profession so inadequate that the newa of the introduction intro-duction into the Berlin and London hospitals hos-pitals of a new and efficacious cure for this fell malady cannot be regarded otherwise than as a matter of public interest in-terest Very little has been heard about this remedy, owing to the fact that the distinguished dis-tinguished bacteriologists engaged in Its discovery have been unwilling to lubject themselves to the "same disad vantage as Dr. Koch, whose cure for consumption has been unjustly proclaimed pro-claimed a failure merely because it was published to the world prematurely and before it was ready for medical application. ap-plication. The new cure, briefly speak-ing, speak-ing, is one of inoculation, with this differencethat, instead of injecting the poison into the system of the pa ' tient, one injects the blood of an a6i : mal which hits been inoculated with a weak culture of the diphtheria hacte ria, the virus of the latter beini,, how ; ever, of so weak a character that it does cot affect the animal with the malady, but merely renders it immune thereto. Repeated experiments made of lata have shown that a few drops of blood from a horse or any other animal thui rendered immune injected into a hi man being suffering from diphtheria are sufficient to arrest and cure the disease. dis-ease. Of course it is too soon as yet to quote the statistics of the few hundreds of cures which have been effected ia Berlin and London by this treatment, Which is to be fully discussed ia all its complicated scientific aspects at the forthcoming international congress of hygiene in September at Budapest But, whatever the ultimate result of its op-plication, op-plication, it has at least one advantage over all other forms of inoculation hith erto discovered namely, that the matter injected into, the system of the patient is free from poison and consequently harmless. New York Tribune. |