View report page

Infective Diseases. 29
XII, giving this information. The six cases referred to in the
previous paragraph are not included in the Table, which deals
with 5,671 persons.
It will be noticed that the time taken to produce immunity is
shown to vary very much. The period which elapses between
the last injection of the immunising dose and the re-Schick test
depends to a large extent on the date when the person concerned
attends at the Clinic to be re-tested. Some of it is due, however,
to actual delay in the production of immunity. A
number of the cases included in this Table because the final re-test
was negative have had one or more positive results before the
final negative one was obtained.
An analysis of the information given in Table XII. brings
out the following points:—
(1) One series of injections was sufficient to produce
immunity in most of the cases— actually, 4,979 out of 5,671
were immunised after the first series.
(2) 633 cases required a second series of injections to
produce the same result.
(3) In a few cases further injections had to be given before
immunity was produced.
(4) 4,224 out of 5,671 cases were protected within six
months after receiving the last dose of immunising serum.
(5) By the end of twelve months this number had
increased to 5,190. There are good grounds for assuming that
a proportion of the remainder would have been found protected
if they had attended earlier to be re-tested.
In addition to the 5,677 persons who have been protected,
301 have completed the first series of injections but cannot be
recorded as protected because the last re-Schick test has given a
positive result. 95 of these have not attended since this positive
re-test. The other 206 have attended the Clinics and have
received further injections but have not yet reacted negative to
the re-Schick test.