Just as rats make excellent laboratory animals for nutrition research, mice for cancer and monkeys for poliomyelitis, so ferrets are invaluable to influenza investigators. Ferret reactions were the basis of Harvard’s Dr. William Firth Wells’s demonstration last month that ultraviolet radiation kills the unknown germ or virus which causes that disease (TIME, Aug. 3). But many doctors think it probable that some infectious agencies change their form in different environments. The question remained: While human influenza could be communicated to ferrets, could ferret influenza be communicated to man?
Last week an answer reached the U. S. from Britain. Dr. C. H. Stuart-Harris of London’s National Institute for Medical Research was scrutinizing some ferrets sick with influenza. One of the little animals sneezed right in the doctor’s face. Forty-five hours later he was in bed with influenza. Last week Dr. Stuart-Harris was up & about again, able to proceed on the assumption that ferret influenza is the same as the malady in man.