G. F. Petrie

The endotoxin of the meningococcus.

1. The view is advanced that the endotoxin of the meningococcus is one of a group of thermostable intracellular bacterial poisons, and that it is not a specific antigenic toxin. 2. The inability of the “endotoxin” to function as an antigen does not lessen its importance as a pathogenic factor in cerebrospinal fever, since the lesions that are associated with the presence of the meningococcus in the tissues are apparently attributable to the pyogenic action of the intracellular poison.

A Commentary on Recent Plague Investigations in Transbaikalia and Southern Russia.

Although much work on the epidemiology of plague has been done in many parts of the world since the discovery of the Bacillus pestis in 1894, the origin of the outbreaks in Eastern and Southern Russia has, until a short time ago, remained obscure. Transbaikalia, together with extensive areas of Northern Manchuria and North-east Mongolia that are conterminous with it, and, again, the region in Southern Russia which includes the Kirghese and Kalmuck steppes and especially that portion of it which lies between the lower reaches of the rivers Volga and Ural have long been known to contain endemic foci of plague, and have been the source of considerable outbreaks of pneumonic plague. Thus, in the winter of 1878–79, an outbreak of this type at Vetlianka, a Cossack village on the right bank of the Volga, caused alarm in Western Europe. Competent epidemiologists–British, French and German–visited the village after the event, and examined the circumstances that favoured the spread of the infection. Their observations were brought together and analysed by Netten Radcliffe (1881) in his memorandum on plague, which gives the first adequate description of a pneumonic plague epidemic. The more recent epidemics of pneumonic plague, namely, those of Manchuria in 1910–11 with 50,000 deaths, Middle China in 1917–18 with 15,000 deaths, and Manchuria in 1920–21 with 9000 deaths, owed their origin to ill-defined centres of infection in the immense tract of land which includes Transbaikalia and which is contiguous to the north-west boundary of China.

An Analysis of the Influence of Irradiation by means of a Mercury Vapour Lamp upon the Health and Fertility of a Breeding Stock of Guinea-pigs and upon the Health of their Offspring during the First Six Weeks of Life

The maintenance of a constant supply of healthy guinea-pigs is an important part of the work of laboratories which are engaged in the production of diphtheria and tetanus antitoxin. The subacute infective processes to which malnutrition predisposes enhance the effect of the test dose of toxin, with the result that irregular deaths among the animals under test render difficult the titration of the antitoxin. For this reason it is desirable that breeding stocks should be kept in suitable animal houses under the best hygienic conditions possible. This policy has been followed in the Serum Department of the Institute for many years; there have been comparatively few introductions of stock from outside sources, and within recent years special attention has been devoted to diet.