Polverini G (1903)

Serumtherapie gegen Beulenpest Muenchener Medizinische Wochenschrift 50:649-651.

Key passage(s)

Translation

“Summarising what has been said above, I conclude as follows:

  1. The results of experiments with serum therapy designed to assess the therapeutic effect of various sera cannot be of any practical value if one does not apply a method of infection entailing a very precise dose of the infectious material, or if one uses cultures other than those  used to immunise the horses from which the serum was produced.
  2. The same serum may exhibit different effects in different animal species; so one cannot anticipate a priori that a serum showing [only] a slight effect in an animal species will [necessarily] be ineffective in man.
  3. The so-called alternative method is the most suitable way of evaluating the therapeutic potential of a serum in man (when meticulous clinical observation [of every patient] is not possible); and it is precisely this alternative method that has been used with success in Bombay to test the serum that we have produced in this city.”

Translation by Ulrich Tröhler