Collecting Typhoid Germs

Dr. Vaughan Extracting the Poison from Germs

The Work Dangerous

Great Quantities of the Germs Grown—Scientific Way of Looking for a Cure for Typhoid

A cure for typhoid fever, or a vaccine which will prevent the disease, is being sought for in a remarkable experiment at the university, says a student correspondent in the Detroit Journal. The largest amount of typhoid germs ever collected, dead, dried, bottled up like salt, is being collected for the purpose.

Dr. Victor C. Vaughan, who, with Prof. Novy discovered Benzozone last winter, has been at work on the typhoid cure since last summer. Dr. Vaughan is dean of the medical department. He has invented and built six big metallic tanks in which 144 square feet of fever germs are being grown. The germ tanks are enclosed within outside tanks, and further guarded against communication with the outer world by inner tanks. In each one, on the surface of a gelatine made from a Japanese seaweed, 24 square feel of germs are grown at a time. In about two weeks' time a square inch of the disease germs overspreads the entire surface in the tank.

These living germs are scraped off, killed and bottled up. Two ounces from a single tank. Two ounces of germ bodies would kill 70,000 guinea pigs.

Dr. Vaughan's purpose is to extract the poison from these germ bodies, a thing which has never before been done. It is the poison which the bacteria carry that causes the fever. Without the poison they would be as harmless as snakes with their venom sacks removed. When the fever poisons are isolated their effect will be tried on the lower animals, by the regular method of discovering an antidote for poison. Whatever will cure this poison will cure typhoid fever.

The dead germs look like a heap of flour. The millions of bodies in the bottle glisten like flour in a glass. A teacup full of them is now in possession of Dr. Vaughan. One thousandth of a gram of this white looking stuff would kill a guinea pig.

Handling these germs is exceedingly hazardous work, especially at one stage. When they have been scraped off the tank with platinum, washed with alcohol or ether, and dried in a vacuum, they are a dry dust which flies into the air at a touch. One breath of this dust would be fatal. The young assistants who scrape the deadly dust into a little heap and bottle it up, are protected by a small cotton mask. The cotton fibers are absolutely germ proof. The cotton is rendered doubly safe by being moistened. The dampness also serves to stop the germs' bodies. The eyes are protected by goggles.