DOCTOR’S DISCOVERY.

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 23 December 1925, Page 3

DOCTOR’S DISCOVERY.

- ON TRACK OF MEASLES AND ’FLU GERMS. Outbreaks of smallpox in England have, in one . respect, led to a > good result. Investigations into their treatment have been followed by a substantial advance in the work of preventive medicine. . • Ur M. H. Gordon, F.R.S., of the Medical Research Council’s staff, undertook researches into the behaviour of three types of the disease; —virulent smallpox; alastrim, the mild type which prevailed at Gloucester; and cowpox, on which Jenner worked to discover his vaccine treatment. As a result it will be possible m future for the general practitioner to know almost immediately and with absolute certainty whether the case under treatment is one of - mild smallpox or chickenpox. * Preventive measures d*n at once be taken to stoo the spread of the more dangerous disease. Another injosti important result achieved by. Dr. Gordon has been to establish the first experimental evidence that cowpox, and possibly the other diseases in the croup, are due to a similar virus as those which cause influenza, mumps, measles and sleepy sickness. The ultimate result of. this work is 'ikely to be the discovery of a serum treatment for influenza, measles, mumps, and encephalitis, as wel] as for smallpox itself. A rabbit, into which cowpox had been injected through the membrane of the nose, developed within a- week a nasal catarrh very similar to mat of a human being with a very bad told.