TUBERCULOSIS. 237

perimental studies of Trudeau and Baldwin, however,
antiphthisin is only much diluted tuberculin, and exerts
no demonstrable influence upon the tubercle bacillus in
vitro, does not cure tuberculosis in guinea-pigs, and
probably inhibits the growth of the tubercle bacillus
upon culture-media to1 which it has been added, only by
its acid reaction.

On the other hand, Ambler has used antiphthisin with
excellent results in the treatment of human tubercu-
losis.

Numerous experimenters, prominent among whom are
Tizzoni, Cattani, Bernheim, and Paquin, have experi-
mented with the tubercle bacillus and tuberculin, hoping
that the principles of serum-therapy might be applicable
to the disease. Nothing positive has, however, been
achieved. The first-named observers claim to have im-
munized guinea-pigs, in whose blood an antitoxin formed;
the last-named thinks the serum of immunized horses
a specific for tuberculosis. The field of experimentation
is an inviting one, though the chronic course of the dis-
ease lessens the certainty with which the results can be
estimated.

Babes and Proca, in an experimental research upon the
action of the antituberculous serum, claim for it a decided
specific action, and demonstrate experimentally that ani-
mals inoculated with tubercle bacilli and injected with
the serum are protected from the spread of the disease.

Mafucci and diVestra found that by injecting guinea-
pigs with serum from sheep immtinized by injections
first of dead, then of living cultures of tubercli bacilli,
although no cures were brought about, the vitality of
the animals was maintained longer. Unprotected animals
died in fifty to fifty-three days. Those injected after in-
fection, seventy-four days, and those injected before infec-
tion, ninety-one days.

The author1 made an elaborate study of the so-called
antituberculin, suggested by Viquerat, and widely praised

1 Jour, of the Amer. Med. Assoc., Aug. 21, 1897.