It is difficult for the ordinary individual to appreciate the significance and importance of a discovery of this character and magnitude. When one thinks calmly of the thousands and thousands of men who have lost their lives during wars because of typhoid epidemics, and of the thousands of others who have returned home practically invalided for life from the same cause, it is possible to, at least, conceive of the benefit to the race such a discovery promises. And when we learn that the discovery is a product of the same principle or method which gave to the world a cure for smallpox, diphtheria and syphilis, we must begin to believe that the medical profession is on the path which is unlimited in its field of promise so far as efficient treatment is concerned. Yet to-day we have people who do not believe in vaccination or in anti-diphtheritic serum. We may not live to see the time, but it is not far distant in the opinion of men qualified to speak with authority, when every disease will be amenable to the serum therapy, and when drugs will virtually be discarded by the human race.
"606."—One of the most important discoveries in the history of medicine was recently given to the world by Dr. Paul Ehrlich.
He called it "606," because it was the 606th experiment he had made with the same end in view. It was designed with the purpose of curing the most terrible disease known to man, syphilis. The name of the remedy is salvarsan. That it will do all that was first claimed for it is still doubtful, but salvarsan and its improvements, neosalvarsan, etc., are accepted by the profession as by far the best treatment yet devised for this dread disease. It points the way for improvement along the same line to an ultimate specific.
Transplanting the Organs of Dead Men Into Living Men.—To take from a recently dead individual a kidney, or a bone, or an artery, and by immersing them in certain fluids thereby keeping them alive indefinitely, and later transplanting them in the body of a living individual so that they will continue to live and perform their function in the new environment, is a revolutionary and a seemingly incredible performance. Yet Dr. Alexis Carrel of the Rockefeller Institute, New York, has accomplished this wonderful task. The smallest imagination can picture the possibilities of this kind of surgery, but, inasmuch as the discovery is so recent and the opportunities for testing it upon human beings are so relatively few, that time alone can tell how far it may be possible to go.
Anti-Meningitis Serum.—Another important discovery that has emanated from the Rockefeller Institute is the Anti-Meningitis serum. The death rate from spinal meningitis, before the introduction of the serum, was 70 per cent., the use of the serum has reduced this percentage to 30. We owe this important contribution to Dr. Simon Flexner.
A Serum for Malaria Now Possible.—Dr. C. C. Bass, of Tulane University, has succeeded in extracting malaria-producing parasites from human blood and keeping them alive in test tubes. This feat had been long attempted but never before with success. The significance of this achievement is that it is the first step toward preparing a serum that will give immunity to malaria.