Puerperal Vaccine

Of puerperal (childbed) fever caused by Streptococcus haemolyticus more than 3,000 U. S. women die every year. Although sulfanilamide has miraculously cured thousands of puerperal infections, physicians have long sought an equally sure preventive, for most survivors of this ravaging fever are left weakened for life, or mutilated by necessary operations.

Last week Professor Jacob Bernard Bernstine and Dr. George Willis Bland of Philadelphia's Jefferson Medical College announced the development of just such a preventive.

Several years ago, with Dr. Ralph Edward Otten, Dr. Bernstine prepared a vaccine from germs found in the vaginal tract of puerperal fever victims. He tried the vaccine out on hundreds of mice, then on a large group of nonpregnant women, to make sure it was not dangerous. "Aside from an occasional complaint such as slight soreness at the site of injection, or mild malaise," said the doctors, "no untoward reactions were observed. Several women volunteered the information that they . . . felt better following the vaccinations."

Then Drs. Bernstine and Bland picked at random 228 volunteers, women attending Jefferson's pre-natal clinic. Most of them had pregnancy complications, including anemia, tuberculosis, heart disease, venereal disease. Some of these complications, noted Drs. Bernstine and Bland, are "factors predisposing, either directly or indirectly, to puerperal infection."

Each woman was given gradually increasing amounts of vaccine every four days, from five to 29 times. At delivery, not one woman came down with puerperal fever.

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