Page:Science and War.djvu/60

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.

generating it. The serum of the blood of such an animal is so rich in the antidote that if it be injected into the veins of the sufferer it reinforces the supplies that Nature affords and counteracts the poison that is being formed by the microbe. It is in this way that diphtheria has lost its worst terrors. A like treatment had been found to be successful in tetanus (lockjaw) before the War. This fearful disease is comparatively rare in civil life but we found to our dismay that it was far from being so in this War. Whether or not it was due to the intensive cultivation in Flanders and Northern France, the dirt carried into wounds was found to be highly charged with tetanus microbes and the mortality from this cause threatened to be heavy. But the remedy bore the strain of this test. The use of the anti-tetanus serum became a routine treatment and proved so successful that (unless it was administered too late, so that the work of the microbe was already too far advanced) it might be relied on to prevent any development of the disease.

54