Geheimrath Herr
v. Bergmann in the Surgical University Clinic. To all these gentlemen
and their assistants I here tender my heartfelt thanks for their
untiring interest which they manifested for this subject and also for
the disinterested help and aid which they have offered at all times and
without which it would have been impossible for me to make such progress
in a few months in this difficult and responsible investigation.

As my work is far from being completed, I can not as yet make any
statements relating to the origin and preparation of this remedy and
reserve these for some future time.[1]

The curative is composed of a clear brown fluid, which in itself is not
perishable, even without special precautionary measures. For use this
fluid must be more or less diluted and these dilutions are perishable
when made with distilled water; Bacterian vegetation soon develops in
them and they become turbid and are no longer fit for use. To prevent
this the dilutions must be sterilized through heat and be kept under
cotton batting or be prepared with a 5 per cent. phenol solution which
is much simpler. Through repeated heating as also through the mixture
with the phenol the efficiency of the diluted solution appears to be
curtailed after a time and for that reason I have always used solutions
as fresh as possible.

The remedy does not act through the stomach; to effect a reliable action
it must be applied subcutaneously. For our experiments we have
exclusively used a syringe decided upon by myself for bacteriological
purposes, which is supplied with a small india-rubber ball and which has
no stamp. Such a syringe can be easily kept positively aseptic by
rinsing with absolutely pure alcohol and on this we base the fact that
not a single abscess has sprung from over a thousand injections.

After trying various parts of the body as places for application we
selected the skin of the back between the shoulderblades and in the
lumbar region, because at these places the injection was almost painless
and caused the least and in most cases no local reaction.

Even at the beginning of our experiments we found that in one
particularly important point the human subject was affected by the
curative in a way decidedly differing from that of the animal subject
generally used, the guinea pig. Therefore another confirmation of the
rule for experimentors upon which hardly enough stress can be laid, not
to rely upon a like effect upon t