DARING OFFER.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 225, 22 September 1932, Page 7

DARING OFFER.

CARRY BACILLUS. Cultures from America to Australia. WOMAN DOCTOR'S COURAGE. (United P.A.—Electric Telegraph—Copyright) NEW YORK, September 21. It is understood that a daring and courageous offer to aid Australian medical scienee in a peculiar difficulty has been made by Dr. Jean Macnamara, of Melbourne, who is at present in Boston. The officials at the Commonwealth laboratory at Melbourne, in order to strengthen their own cultures of the bacillus of cerebro meningitis, have attempted to import cultures of the disease from the New York State Health Department, Albany, but those sent in sealed containers by mail have arrived dead. Dr. Macnamara, who shortly will return to Australia after the completion of her studies of infantile paralysis ai". Boston, has offered to carry back with her some meningitis cultures ip open containers and to maintain them in a warm temperature by means of a thermo flask, and each four days to subculture them. This complex mode of transportation, which has been successfully carried out by Scandinavian bacteriologists, has the approval of the scientists at the Rockefeller Institute here, and it is understood that Dr. Macnamara has sought the necessary permission from the Australian authorities.

It is learned that the Commonwealth Health Officer will ask for this approval and - that the consent of the owners of the steamship lines will also be sought.

In spite of the virulence of the bacilli, and the necessity for conveying them in open containers, the Commonwealth's medicinal requirements it is believed make the step essential and it is expected that the endorsement of so high a scientific body as the Rockefeller Institute will assure the permission of the authorities concerned being granted.

Dr. Jean Macnamara, formerly consulting officer to the Victorian Infantile Paralysis Research Committee, a few months ago was awarded a fellowship by the Rockefeller Foundation to enable her to study abroad for one year. She went to New York, and subsequently to Boston to begin research work at the Harvard Paralysis Institution'. She expected to remain there some months, and then to continue her work in. New York until about the end of this year.

Opinion in Auckland is that the carrying of bacilli cultures, in the manner indicated in the cabled message, will not endanger life on board the ship on which Dr. Macnamara travels. Although Dr. Macnamara herself would be running something of a risk, her task was no more dangerous than the carrying of ordinary laboratory routine—work which she was quite capable of performing.

Numerous microbes produce meningitis, and they are practically all well known to bacteriologists. Some of them, however, are difficult to keep, and Auckland doctors are of the opinion that the cultures to be forwarded from New York belong to this latter class.