WORK AMONG RATS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 20012, 1 December 1927, Page 5

WORK AMONG RATS

A WOMAN’S EXPERIMENTS WAB AGAINST DISEASE There is a charming young woman in Knightbridge •whose greatest interest in kfe is the study of the anatomy uf a rat! But it is only a means to an end—a work of research —the results of which, in the course of time, may have an important bearing on medical science. Most pathologists know her, and she has already impressed the Royal Society of Medicine with the importance of her experiments. A London writer says:—When I called to see Dr. Ethel Brownung I was told that she had gone to University College to fetch some rats! Later a bright attractive woman in the early tii.rtics invited me into a private laboratory to examine rates undergoing special feeding in the cause of medical science. ‘ ‘ I am working wtth Dr. M. J. Rowlands, ” said Dr. Browning. “He has been endeavouring for many years to prove the value of Vitamin B in our food. Vitamin B is the growing wheat germ. “I believe that we shall have to get back to Nature for our cures for disease,” she explained. “If people led a normal life and ate the right food, there would be far less, if any, disease. We feel convinced that many cases of rheumatoid arthritis springfrom the intestines, and we hope to prove that it is the absence of Vitamin B which is responsible for a great number of malignant complaints. “I use rats for my experiments to try and prove these theories. The rats are bred on Dr. Rowland’s farm in the country, brought to University College for killing and to this laboratory for post-mortem work. We also keep a few live ones here.” Most women would shudder, and some would faint, at the idea of Dr. Browning’s work, but although she is essentially feminine and a gifted pianist and novelist, she says she loves her researches, and has been eager to study meuiciiie and bacteriology ever since she was a girl. ‘‘Here is a deficiently fed rat,” Dr. Bro wiring said, indicating a full-sized rat whose coat and general appearance showed signs of malnutrition. “And here are the normally-fed ones in both white and brown. After the rats are killed by chloroform I remove their organs and pass them through various solutions in readiness for examination. They arc later put into melted wax and allowed to set into these small blocks. Then they are cut into microscopic slices w/ith a microtome knife, mounted on small glass plates, and each plate—there arc hundreds of them—is kept and indexed for reference.”