" ENTERO-VACCINE."
[To Tn. Norms or T. ..SP7,077707...1 Sva,—Last November, while in hospital myself with typhoid, I saw a short reference to " enteravaccine" in the Daily Telegraph. I wrote to the Red Cross Hospital-in Paris asking it they could give me any information about it. At that time they said they knew nothing about it. I afterwards found an article had been published about it in Le Alain of November 10th, the substance of which I have translated and a copy of which I enclose. I am trying to get more copies of the original, but have not yet received them. Your article on "Compulsory Inoculation" in the Spectator of February 13th makes me think you may care to Bee this—I am, Sir, &e.,
"M. Auguste Lumiere and M. Chevrotier have invented
• entero-vaccination.' Vaccination against typhoid has contain inconveniences ; it requires the intervention of a doctor and the injection of the vaccine liquid under the skin; this little operation is frequently accompanied by painful feverish symptoms which forbid its use daring a campaign, and aim in the °sae of patients suffering from tuberculords, nephritis, and other acute or chronic complaints. • Enters-vaccination' can be made use of even under
fire.
The vaccine Is prepared as follows Cultures of twenty-four hours of the bacilli of Eberth, of paratyphique bacilli and of bacterium coil, as virulent es possible, are sown into Rena vials. After forty-eight hours the oolonies are gathered, washed in physiological serum, and eentrifugated in order to eliminate the greater part of the exotoxines. The microbic mass is then emnleionised by mechanical agitation in a volume of distilled water of such an amount that every cubic centimetre shall contain about ten milliard, of bacilli. After heating for an hoar at fifty degrees, care is taken by culture and inoculation to ascertain that the liquid is sterile, and then the three kinds of microbes are mixed proportionately to their toxicity—that is to say, three hundred million of the bacilli of Eberth, one hundred and eighty million bacterium Colt, and one hundred and twenty million of paratyphique bacilli. Instantaneous delineation by means of pulverisation makes it possible to obtain very rapidly at fifty degrees a perfectly dry vaccinal powder containing about five hundred million bacilli to the milligramme. It now only remains to dilute the dosage required by the addition of a soluble inert substance and to divide the mass into ephernles which, lastly, are Beratinixed. The dose of the vaccine for a man is twenty-eight ephereles, each containing ten milliards of microbes, which are to be taken in one week, at the rate of four spherules day. Before offering their enteric vaccine to the military authorities M. Lumi5re and his collaborator experimented with it upon more than ten thousand individuals in two hundred and eighty different places. The note prepared by them for the Academy of Sciences enters into details which are too technical to be reproduced here ; it must suffice to give the results. Thirty capsules, occupying less room than a packet of cigarettes, suffice to arm a man against the typhoid infection. Since its adoption by Dr. Roux of the Pasteur Institute, M. LutniArs has been sending the *hernias by thousands to the Preach troops at his own cost ; he delivers thirty thousand a week to them. No reaction is possible, and every man after the easy absorption of the remedy is immune to typhoid infection for at least three years, the experiments made not having as yet lasted longer."
(We know nothing as to the merits of this new treatment, but it is obvious that if the Mathis account is well founded a much better way than inoculation has been discovered. We are bound to say, however, that if the successes are as great se those claimed we are surprised not to have heard more of M. Lumiere's capsules.—En. Spectator.)
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