Notes

Abstract

LECTURING before the Royal Society of Medicine on March 22, Lt.-Col. Nathan Raw gave an account of his work and views on immunity in human tuberculosis. Col. Raw agrees with other investigators that man is attacked by two fundamentally different tuberculous viruses, the human and the bovine. The former is conveyed from person to person by direct infection and mainly attacks the lungs; the other is conveyed by milk from tuberculous cows and develops in the first few years of life. These two types| of tubercle bacilli will not live in the body at the j same time, and, further, an attack by one virus produces an immunity to the other. The bacilli may be attenuated by cultivating for years outside the body, so that they no longer convey the disease on inoculation into susceptible animals. Vaccines can be pre-pared from these attenuated cultures, and may be employed for the treatment of tuberculosis in man. Cases j of infection with the human bacillus treated with the ! vaccine of the bovine virus have shown considerable improvement. Animals may be completely immunised against uberculosis by the use of these attenuated cultures, and Col. Raw expressed the opinion that if i all children with a tuberculous family history were vaccinated with the attenuated cultures, an entirely ! safe procedure, they would be in a much better position to resist infection in after years.