Abstract
This book is essentially a record of the personal opinions of the author after an extensive experience of twenty years on the preparation and use of prophylactic and therapeutic vaccines in different diseases. Rabies and vaccinia are included, although not strictly bacterial, but prophylaxis by means of diphtheria toxin, and Dick s scarlatina toxin, are omitted. Very few diseases are included for which the author has not himself used vaccines. Much sound and valuable advice is given about the kind of case in which vaccines should be avoided or only given with great caution For the rest, the advice, if rather conventional and based on almost purely empirical clinical grounds, is backed by experience and free from the uncritical and dangerous optimism of many treatises on the subject. Prof. Dudgeon is adverse to the treatment of acute general infections by vaccines. The more recent advances in the theory of prophylactic vaccines and bacterial antigens are unnoticed, and in this the author consistently adheres to his policy of dealing only with what he himself has tried for a long period. No reasons are given in support of the usc of therapeutic vaccines beyond the author s personal belief in their efficacy, and no new experimental evidence is adduced.
Bacterial Vaccines and their Position in Therapeutics.
Prof. Leonard S. Dudgeon. (Modern Medical Monograms, edited by Prof. Hugh Maclean.) Pp vii + 87. (London: Constable and Co., Ltd., 1927.) 7s. 6d. net.
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[Book Reviews]. Nature 120, 948 (1927). https://doi.org/10.1038/120948b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/120948b0