ABSTRACT
Bacterial interference due to 502A appears to differ fundamentally from the antagonistic effects described below which involve antibiotic production. An observation of Babes, whose implications have still not been explored after almost 100 years, was that apart from growth inhibition bacterial antagonism could be manifest as a temporary loss of pathogenicity. During the subsequent 50 years a variety of bacteria were used in attempts to treat superficial infections of the skin and mucosae, as well as systemic disease. A series of continuing personal investigations which began in 1967 have dealt comprehensively with the distribution of antagonistic bacteria on normal and diseased skin, their ability to interact in vitro and in vivo with pathogenic microorganisms, and their possible ecologic and epidemiologic role. The preliminary observations on microbial antagonism in England and France during the 1870s have already been described together with the subsequent empirical applications of this phenomenon.
