THE FERMENT-ANTIFERMENT BALANCE AND ITS RELATION TO THERAPEUSIS

For many years able and patient investigators have been occupied with the elaboration of the science of immunology. Numerous have been the achievements that have rewarded the direction of the foremost medical workers into these channels of thought and research; indeed, so splendid and satisfying have been many of them that we have gradually come to assume that therapeutic advance can take place only along these well demarcated lines. And yet, certain of the commoner infections have failed to yield to the intricate structure that has been reared in the effort to overcome them; failure which we have felt was due not to the method of attack, but to present limitations in the application of the theory by individual investigators. The study of tuberculosis illustrates the point most clearly. The end-result of innumerable immunologic studies has here left the problem of therapeusis practically unaltered; tuberculin therapy, introduced on a background