Miscellany
1895
Boston Medical and Surgical Journal
of .New York, has recently expressed her ideas aB to medical women as follows. To any one at all conversant with the facts her estimate must appeal as altogether just. Certainly few women are better §.b\e to judge of such a matter than she, herself so striking an exception to the deficiencies she characterizes : " In woman, we find, on the whole, a less quantum of force, or surplus of vitality, over and above the needs of individual nutrition. This relative defect must be compensated by greater
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... precision of technical training iu order to diminish the friction of the mental working machine,--an instrument of precision may, uuder favorable circumstances, turn out work which is equivalent in value to that effected by sledge hammers. This need of strenuous drill and discipline a sort of West Point system is not recognized in the medical education of women at all at present. In fact, it is only just beginning to be accepted that a college education is a desirable preliminary to plunging into the extraordinary difficulties of medical study. It is still generally supposed that to offer a curriculum to be traversed is all that is necessary ; whereas the real need is of practical exercises of considerable variety ayd severity iu order to train faculty and develop new brain force where inherited and traditional basis for exact work was lacking. The absence of this aud of great medical teachers in America at all events, who are accessible to women go far to explain the mediocre results so far achieved." ON THE IMMUNIZING AND CURATIVE EF-FECT OF ANTITOXIC BLOOD-SERUM OF THE SHEEP IN TYPHOID INTOXICATION. Peifer, of Greifswald, spoke on this subject at the German Congress of Internal Medicine. In conjunction with Beumer he had performed experiments on the immunizing effect of the blood-serum from sheep who had been treated for three months with sterilized cultures of the typhoid bacillus. Earlier experiments had shown these investigators that the toxine of typhoid cultures was contained iu the bodies of the bacilli themselves. Cultures which had been passed through the Chamberland filter were showu to be less toxic than before filtration. The sterilization of the virulent cultures without affecting their toxic properties was obtained by keeping them for one hour at a temperature of 55-60°C. The work of Behring aud his collaborators on diphtheria and tetanus had led the writers to approach the questiou as to whether small amounts of virulent cultures of the typhoid bacillus produced in the blood of animals antitoxic substances which inhibited the toxic effect of repeated injections of the cultures. In numerous experiments on guinea-pigs this question was answered iu the affirmative. The effect of the antitoxic serum depended not in a power to destroy the bacteria, but to neutralize the toxines. Experiments with large animals (sheep) showed that it was possible by previous or simultaneous injections of antitoxic serum to immunize guinea-pigs and mice against three times the fatal dose of the cultures. The writers also, on the ground of their observations, arrived at the conclusion that animals already suffering severely from the toxic effect of the cultures two to four hours after the administration of a fatal dose, could be cured by the injection of the antitoxic serum.
doi:10.1056/nejm189508081330607
fatcat:7usqzn3zkzgihfgqrkpmxqankm