Key passage(s)
Translation
“Summarising what has been said above, I conclude as follows:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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