PROFESSOR MAKES INTENSIVE STUDY OF YELLOW FEVER

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6814, 18 January 1929, Page 12

PROFESSOR MAKES INTENSIVE STUDY OF YELLOW FEVER

OBTAINS SERUM FOR COUNTERACTING DISEASE

Professor Kuczynski, who has spent years in attempting to discover the cause of yellow fever, now claims that he has succeeded in isolating the excitant to this disease (states a correspondent in the Morning Post). His experiments, which were as dangerous as those which cost Noguchi his life this year on the Gold Coast, consisted in ‘‘physiologically” breeding the bacillus, which when applied to animal and human life, produced the same effects as yellow fever. This, he explained at a meeting of the Association for Internal Medicine, ho succeeded in producing after studying tho disease both in Africa and at home in his laboratory.

The professor then worked on the basis of Dr. Stoke’s discovery in the Rockefeller Institute that yellow fever is infectious among Rhesus monkeys, while not being transmitted by the usual experimental animals like rabbits and guinea-pigs. He therefore applied his bacillus to such monkeys and there developed the same symptoms as those from which persons suffer who are infected with yellow fever.

The professor observed that the disease could be transmitted from one animal to another bv tho tropical mosquito in the same manner as yellow fever is transmitted. He did not conclude that his bacillus was the excitant, so greatly sought, merely from his experiments on monkeys, for both he and his assistant caught tho disease, infected by the monkeys, and produced by tho bacillus which he had bred.

A specialist who attended both patients gave a report at the meeting on tho course of their illness, which was highly dangerous and which was identical. he said, with that of yellow fever.

Professor Kuczynski went on to say that, with the help of the excitant bred by him, he had obtained a serum with which he could inoculate the monkeys. Monkeys suffering from yellow fever which were inoculated with tho serum recovered from the disease, while the others died.