The control of virus infections: submitted for the Lewis Cameron Undergraduate Prize in Bacteriology, 1964

Virology is still in its infancy when compared with the now well - established parent study of bacteriology. When one remembers how slow to progress were the advances in bacteriology, which. we now accept as commonplace, it is not so surprising that since the first discovery of a virus in the late nineteenth century there has been very little progress towards control of virus infections. But, let it be said at the outset, this is no detriment to the virologist - the subject is fraught with difficulties. The fact that viruses can only be grown in living media, and that to prove even their presence, let alone their identity, is a procedure laborious in the extreme, would be enough to discourage the average worker; but add to this the fact that each new discovery in the field seems to add to the complications rather than clarify the situation and one begins to see the immensity of the problem. There are even diseases which appear to be of viral aetiology where no agent has yet been isolated. However, one would not want to approach the subject of control of virus infections in too gloomy a light. Progress has been made and indeed continues to be made and the prospects are improving with the realisation that the control of the virus is a separate problem from the control of the bacterium, and the principles which have been applied with considerable success to the latter may not necessarily be those which will provide the answer to the former.propose to consider the subject along three main lines - (l) the treatment of the actual clinical attack of a virus infection, (2) prophylaxis, (3) the wider subject of epidemiology and actual prevention of disease of viral aetiology