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obviously many serious risks associated with this chance method of
obtaining the desired protection. A child developes immunity by
nature's method sometime after the age of 6 years; in other words,
by the time a child has reached the age of 6 years it has repeatedly
encountered the germ of Diphtheria in quantities too small and too
feeble to cause an attack of real Diphtheria, but every time the child
has encountered these small doses of germs, the toxins or poisons
given off by the germs have stimulated the tissue cells so that these
have manufactured anti-toxin, and so the child becomes immune.
Assuredly you will get some cases of Diphtheria occurring amongst
children over 6 years of age; that is simply because such children
have not been rendered immune through not having come into contact,
from time to time, with minute doses of the germ. In London you do
not get much Diphtheria amongst the older schoolboys and schoolgirls,
and the reason is that in London the disease is endemic, always there,
and that being so, the older boys and girls are exposed to slight germ
doses from time to time and so they become immune.
Now take the case of a child under 6 years. A new-born infant,
although its body cells are undeveloped, and although it has not had
repeated slight experiences of the germ, is nevertheless immune to
Diphtheria; it is non-susceptible. Why ? It gets this immunity or
protection as a birth-right from its mother's blood. Unfortunately this
inherited immunity disappears by the end of the first six months or year
of life. There is a period between one and six years in which the child
has no resistance and has not yet learned to manufacture its own antitoxin.
Under the circumstances, medical science is faced with the
question—can we do nothing to protect the helpless children between
one and six years, or are we to stand by helpless as we watch two
or three little coffins carried to the grave every day in London as
the result of Diphtheria ? The answer is most decidedly we can! .
Is it possible to immunise the individual, to make him non-susceptible by
imitating nature's methods, such as I have just explained to you ? Is
it possible, artificially, to stimulate the tissue cells of a child between
the ages of one and six years, so that he may manufacture his own
supply of anti-toxin? The work of Von Behring, Schick, Park, Zingher
and others enables us to reply to this unquestionably in the affirmative.
In 1913 Von Behring made the first attempt to immunise human beings;
then Dr. Bela Schick, of Vienna, gave to us the immunity or susceptibility
test which is now known as the 'Schick Test.' In 1919