Specific Serum Treatment in Chronic Ulcerative Colitis

Vaccine prepared from the diplostreptococcus, which I isolated in 1924¹and which appears to have etiologic significance, has been shown to be of value in the treatment of patients with chronic ulcerative colitis. Various reports have appeared in the literature on the results of treatment in isolated cases, and the treatment has been used in a considerable number of unselected cases in the Mayo Clinic. The treatment has been most successful in cases of chronic invalidism in which the temperature is normal or nearly normal, the secondary anemia is only moderate and the disease has run a progressive downward course, yet apparently leaving in the patient a fighting reserve. The vaccine apparently has little value in the small group of cases in which symptoms of the disease develop rapidly as an acute fulminating illness, with fever, leukocytosis, abdominal cramps, tenesmus, many bloody, purulent rectal evacuations and rapid wasting. In these