TWO CHAMPIONS AGAINST TUBERCLE
I.—M. HENRY SPAHLINGER.
R each end of the Lake of Geneva, as it so chances, there lives a champion of mankind against tuberculosis, the white plague, one of the chief enemies of civilization. These two Swiss gentlemen differ widely in personality, experience and methods. In a sense, they might be said to proceed on opposed principles, but that would be erroneous. One of them works entirely with the tubercle bacillus, the other never sees it nor considers it. Any student might be excused for taking sides and definitely committing himself to the one rather than the other ; but that, also, would be an error. Both men, Dr. A. Rollier and M. H. Spahlinger, are devoted, laborious, original, simple. It is my great privilege to claim them both as my personal friends. I believe them to be the two best friends of man in the fight against tuberculosis, and in this article and its successor I will try to set down the facts, without fear or favour, but not without the explicit hope, by their means, of serving my own country first and fore- most. I may, perhaps, be permitted to say that I have lived with this work and the workers ; and that the public may be, and indeed has been, seriously misled by writers, some qualified and some, I had almost said, disqualified, by a medical education, who have pronounced upon this work after, for instance, a per- functory half-hour in a solarium or a laboratory.
First, M. Spahlinger, his work being in a stage of urgent importance, and dating historically from our first positive and exact knowledge of consumption. That knowledge we owe to the German, Koch, great pupil of the supreme Frenchman, kisteur. In 1881, Koch first saw the tubercle bacillus, after a search of many years, success in which required the invention of new methods of detection, as in the recent case of the detection of the cancer parasite by Mr. J. E. Barnard. From the moment of the discovery of Koch's bacillus until this hour there has been a possibility, nay, a high probability, that methods might be devised on the lines which have gained superb success in certain other diseases. One need only mention inoculation and vaccination against smallpox, inoculation agaihst the typhoid and para- typhoid fevers—which saved hundreds of thousands of lives in the late War—and the curative antitoxins against diphtheria and tetanus.
Koch himself was, of course, the first man to set to work on these lines. In 1890 his first tuberculin was'- announced, very prematurely, owing to the haste and vanity and ill-judgment of him whom we now call the ex-Kaiser. Consumptives hastened to Berlin from all quarters and were disappointed. Many other prepara- tions, made by Koch and others, have followed. The latest was announced in this country under the highest auspices in 1923; and the less said of it the better. There is thus behind us a whole generation of ghastly disappointment, and a long record, not only of rashness and worse, but also of honestly mistaken judgment on the part of skilled observers.
M. Spahlinger belongs to the company of bacteriologists whose record has been so deplorable and meagre in this field. It might be argued that, according to long experience, no success on bacteriological lines can be obtained. That would be pitifully foolish, and no one who knew aught of the history of scientific discovery could listen for a second to such a contention. But it might very properly be argued that success on the lines hitherto pursued was improbable, and that some new ideas were required. As Bacon observed long ago, the secret of success is rightly to put the question to Nature.
Somewhat less than two decades ago, M. Spahlinger, after three years as a medical student, interrupted his Studies because he could not endure vivisection as prac- tised in Geneva and generally upon the Continent. Lest people should think him an idler or stupid, he took a degree in law, and that is the beginning and the end of the argument, which certainly appealed to me as to many others until I learnt the facts, that a " Swiss lawyer " —presumably excogitating the data with his feet on the mantelpiece, like hosts of my correspondents during the past twenty years and more—could scarcely be expected to succeed where expert bacteriologists of proved eminence, with every resource at their disposal, had failed. No student of Nature can ever have worked with more ardour and effort and self-sacrificing devotion than M. Spahlinger. I could not have credited the facts without seeing them for myself, and I greatly regret the extreme, if excusable, preoccupation with the lovely work of Dr. Rollier, near the other end of that lake, which long prevented me from learning what M. Spahlinger has done. A famous physician, in London, told me that I must see for myself ; that in one visit (the first of very many) to M. Spahlinger's laboratories he had learnt more about tuberculosis than he had ever learnt before in all his life, and that my experience would be similar. It was ; and after many days, and much reading, and the visiting of many patients in the company of English doctors expert in tubercle, I now try to make amends for the lateness of this present date.
M. Spahlinger has turned the family estate at Carouge, just outside Geneva, into a place entirely devoted to the preparation of antidotes and preventive materials against tubercle. His leading idea is that the bacilli rlo not produce their toxins except as means of self defence. He, therefore, " worries " them by various means, such as variations in light and temperature.
He rejects all methods of preparing his serum which involve the use of powerful chemicals or high temperatures such as do not occur under the actual conditions of the disease. For many years, absolutely regardless—in fact, reckless—of cost, he has poured money into this work, and his equipment, in apparatus and animals, to-day far surpasses anything I have ever seen elsewhere. The opinion of skilled clinicians is that the same may be said of a very large number of his consumptive patients, in whom the disease, apparently hopeless, has now been, if not cured, at least as if it did not exist, for several years. His horses provide the curative serum, and by delicate and prolonged processes he obtains, through the action of guinea-pigs, preparations with which he has so immunized many cows—to be seen by the visitor—that they can now take in vast quantities of virulent bacilli without any harm whatsoever.
It is the fact that, having refused many offers of immense sums of money to commercialize his methods for human beings, M. Spahlinger and his family now find themselves in a condition of serious financial embarrassment, thanks to the vast sums of money spent without return in that kind upon this work. The danger at the moment is that the estate and its unique equipment and its animals, whose bio-chemical condition it has taken years to produce and would take as many to replace, may have to be sacrificed, to the disastrous loss of mankind, as I for one believe.
In this brief article one can only hope to indicate the main outlines of the case. Fortunately, however, those interested may be referred to a document, copies of which will be sent freely to any reader of the Spectator who writes to Mr. David Masters, 23 Goldhurst Terrace, Hampstead, London, NAV. It is called " Evidence concerning the Spahlinger Treatment' for Tuber- culosis," and was prepared and sent to the medical profession in this country not long ago. In a footnote I transcribe the names* of those with whose complime to this most impressive document was prepared. They will satisfy the reader that this is a serious and responsible undertaking, and that the work of M. Spahlinger must now command the careful attention of all who are concerned with tuberculosis in any way and who regard themselves as fair and open-minded students.
CRUSADER.
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