In the long run, provided the sick person survives, more antitoxine is generated than is required to save life.  The excess remains in the system for a greater or lesser length of time, and this fact explains the individual’s subsequent immunity to the disease from which he has recovered; any fresh invading force of the microbes of that disease finds that defensive preparations have been made in advance.  In the case of some diseases this acquired immunity is usually lifelong, as in that of small-pox; in others, of which influenza is a notable example, it is as a rule very transitory; and there are all gradations between the two.  It is thought that this acquired immunity to some diseases may be transmitted to the offspring, for it is quite certain that there are many people who are from birth insusceptible to scarlet fever, no matter what may be the extent of their exposure to that disease.

The recognition of Nature’s elaboration of protective antitoxines has led to their artificial cultivation in the lower animals, and, thus produced, they have been used with brilliant results in the prevention and cure of at least one formidable disease, diphtheria.  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.  Omitting unnecessary details, we may describe the process of obtaining diphtheria antitoxine as follows:  A certain amount of diphtheritic poison (of the bacteriological sort, prepared by cultivating the diphtheria microbe) is injected into the circulation of a horse—­sufficient to make the horse sick, but not enough to endanger his life.  The horse’s system straightway begins to elaborate the protective antitoxine, and there results from this one injection a sufficient amount of it to save the horse, although far too little to make the serum of his blood potent enough for medicinal use.  Hence, after the lapse of a suitable interval, he is again injected with diphtheritic poison, and for the second time his blood begins to generate the antitoxine.  And the process is repeated again and again, the virulence of the poison being increased each time, until the horse’s blood is fairly reeking with antitoxine.  Then blood is drawn freely from the horse, and it is allowed to separate into clot and serum, the latter alone being the part destined for use.  This serum is tested on a small animal that has been inoculated with a deadly dose of the diphtheritic poison; if it saves the little creature from death, it is assumed to be potent enough for use on human beings, and, handled with all possible precautions against putrefaction or any contamination with pathogenic bacteria, it is furnished to physicians, its degree of potency being designated in “units.”

If in this brief article, which does not purport to be more than a sketch of the tremendous strides made by medicine in the Nineteenth Century, so much space has been given to the germ theory of disease, it is because the demonstration of the truth of that theory has been absolute, and has constituted the very marrow of almost all the medical progress of the century that has been the outcome of continuous thought and study as opposed to chance discovery.