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The neutralization of the poisons has been a passive one, and after recovery the body cells are no more engaged in producing antitoxine than before. The antitoxine which was inoculated is soon eliminated by secretion, and the body is left with practically the same liability to attack as before.
Once more I am seeking to preserve one life, that others may go on too, and I ordered the woman to take a rest, for she has been up two nights. When I last went to the Jellifies', after changing all my clothes, and taking all possible precautions, I told her that the child was better, and that I was under the impression that the antitoxine was having a favorable effect.
The child has diphtheria and you must leave at once." The man's voice was frightfully hoarse, and he unconsciously put his hand up to his throat. She looked at him without answering. Then she went up to the little table and picked up a small vial she had noticed. "Antitoxine, seven thousand units," she read. Then she took up a small glass syringe armed with a bright steel needle, and stared at it.
I stood in a corner, out of the way, for now it seemed to me that I was of very little moment. This man was going to do everything that really mattered, and I would only sit by the bed, afterwards, and watch, and try and do things to help. Dr. Johnson filled a syringe with the antitoxine and injected the stuff in Dr. Grant's arm, which looked awfully white, and then he turned to me.
There was an ejaculation excusable under the circumstance and the skipper grabbed my arm. "I won't wait a minute," he said. "I've got a doctor, that's the main thing, and all the antitoxine in the place. Come along." We jumped in the cab, which drove off rapidly, and in a minute we reached the dock, where the yawl was waiting.
But the elaboration of an antitoxine takes time, and the result in any given case, whether in recovery or in death, seems to be settled by the ability or inability of the vital powers of the individual to hold out until they are relieved by the evolution of the necessary amount of antitoxine.
The immense reduction of the mortality from this disease that has followed the introduction of the treatment with the artificial antitoxine we owe to Behring, of Germany, and Roux, of France.
This substance has been isolated from the blood of animals that have recovered from an attack of diphtheria, and has been called diphtheria antitoxine. But even with this knowledge the recovery is not fully explained. This antitoxine neutralizes the effects of the diphtheria toxine, and then the body develops strength to drive off the bacteria which have obtained lodgment in the throat.
As we have seen, a recovery from an attack of most germ diseases renders the individual for a time immune against a second attack. This applies less, however, to a recovery after the artificial inoculation with antitoxine than when the individual recovers without such aid.
Calmette, another graduate of the Pasteur Institute, has extended the range of the serum-therapy to include the prevention and treatment of poisoning by venoms, and has developed an antitoxine that has already given immunity from the lethal effects of snake bites to thousands of persons in India and Australia.
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