Word: serum
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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When the child was one year old, she received toxin-antitoxin against diphtheria. The serum came from a horse. Last year she was exposed to diphtheria. The doctor injected a protective dose of antitoxin (derived from a horse) in her left buttock. The part swelled. Three days later the doctor found diphtheria germs in cultures from her nose and throat, and at once gave her a large dose of antitoxin in the right buttock. That antitoxin also came from a horse. The left buttock was still swollen. Within a few days the right buttock swelled and, as the days passed...
Anaphylaxis, or sudden, violent death after serum injection, occasionally occurs. Immunologists are seeking explanation. The Chicago child had lingered a month. Her doctors searched the medical literature for enlightenment. In 1903, they found, Maurice Arthus, who is now professor of physiology at the University of Lausanne, had described the "Arthus Phenomenon" in rabbits. Repeated injections of a protein (serums are protein) make rabbits sensitive to the same protein. Subsequent doses become progressively more poisonous. Four years ago Dr. Wesley Emmett Gatewood of Portland, Ore. and Dr. Clarence William Baldridge of Iowa City reported six cases which seemed to prove...
...Serum taken from a horse had become poison to her. That was the medical lesson her death taught. Serums must not be discarded. They are too useful. But if a patient shows a bad reaction to a specific serum, the doctor should wait until the symptoms subside. If time is a factor, as it is in an attack of diphtheria, he should use a serum taken from a different kind of animal, to whose blood the patient is not sensitive. If horse serum was used at first, use serum from a goat, sheep or cow next time...
When Lillian Fisher, 15, of Joliet, Ill , developed infantile paralysis last week the Fisher physician telephoned long distance to Chicago's Durand Hospital for serum, heard Dr. George Howitt Weaver tell him to use parrot's blood instead. Immediately a parrot was bled. Five cubic centimetres were injected into Lillian Fisher. She improved. When Dr. Weaver heard about the injection he exclaimed: "The doctor just misunderstood me. I said parent's blood, not parrot's blood...
...three months, Doc Dobbin could stand ten times as much diphtheria poison as he had first received. He had formed substances in his blood to fight the germs. Laboratory men withdrew blood from Doc Dobbin's neck. They stored it in sterile glass cylinders, allowed the valuable antibody serum to separate from the rest of the blood. After three days the serum was siphoned of, stored in a refrigerator ready for use. Antitoxin horses are bled once a month, are permitted to rest, feed well between times. No matter how old they become, they are useful for antitoxin...