People of 50 and more should be immunized against pneumonia, is the opinion expressed in the "Archives of Internal Medicine" by Dr. Paul Kaufman and his associates. They found that only one-quarter as many contract pneumonia, if they have been immunized for a number of years as compared with an un-immunized control group. The experiment was conducted at Welfare Hospital, an institution built a few years ago by the New York City Department of Hospitals for the main purpose of studying chronic and old-age diseases.
Dr. Kaufman and his associates used a specially prepared vaccine, a so-called "antigenic polysaccharide," extracted from the shells of pneumococci, germs which cause almost all pneumonia cases. This substance is a modification of a substance originally discovered by Rockefeller Institute investigators. In its present form it was used by the Welfare Hospital group for the' inoculation of many thousands of old people of the New York City Home for Dependents who volunteered for immunization, with the result that few among them contracted pneumonia.
Tt is generally known among public health workers that the new sulfonamide drugs are not so effective against pneumonia in the old as in the young. While the death rate decreases considerably, still every third or fourth old person succumbs. That is why the suggested immunization is of such great public health importance. The yearly number of pneumonia cases, influenza pneumonias included, is about 500,000. of which before the introduction of sulfanilamide about 160,000 were fatal. Approximately half of these were people above the age of 50.
The immunizing substance used by Dr. Kaufman and his associates was first prepared by themselves, At present it comes from the United Public Health Service.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.