Last week gloom enveloped Camp LaGuardia (for homeless men) in Orange County, N. Y. Reason: the 60 pedigreed rabbits, which New York City’s Department of Health entrusted to the campers for breeding purposes last fall, had produced only 100 bunnies suitable for the municipal culture of pneumonia serum, thus blighting the department’s hopes of shaving its annual $24,000 rabbit bill. Said Chief Rabbit-Keeper William Hodson, commissioner of Public Welfare: “I have been feeding them almost nothing but hormone extracts.
They are a disgrace.” At the same time enthusiasm marked the 40th convention of the Society of American Bacteriologists in San Francisco. For 38-year-old Dr. Walther Frederick Goebel of the Rockefeller Institute Hospital announced that he had produced artificially a successful pneumonia antigen. (An antigen is a substance which stimulates the organism to produce antibodies ; a serum is a blood constituent in which antibodies have already been produced.) The Goebel antigen is a combination of egg white and an acid obtained by complicated treatment of cellulose products (such as sawdust, straw or wood fibres) with water.
Large-scale production of the antigen, agreed the enthusiastic bacteriologists, would be cheap, simple and eliminate the necessity of using rabbits.
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