In the Graduate Schools

Dr. Hans Zinsser, professor of bacteriology at the Harvard Medical School, announced recently before the Society of American Bacteriologists the results of his experiments in typhus fever immunization. This report, coming from one of the leading scientists of the country indicates that the disease is now under control and is regarded as one of the most important contributions to medicine during the past year.

Zinsser stated in a paper read before about 200 members of the society in the sectional session of medical bacteriology, immunology, and comparative pathology that he had succeeded in isolating the "Rickettsia bodies of Mooser." the germ that takes millions of lives through the disease, typhus fever. He described experiments in which he had grown large numbers of the germ in pure culture, thereby producing a vaccine which has successfully immunized animals from the fever.

Typhus a Scourge

Typhus fever, not to be confused with typhoid fever which is considered well under control at the present time, has been one of the worst pestilences in all history. It attacks, for the most part, populations weakened by famine, or that do not practice correct sanitation. In 1922 at the height of the Volga famine in Russia, it took more than a million lives.

The experimentations necessary to In his final analysis, Zinsser reported a series of experiments which, "while not 100 per cent successful demonstrate unambiguously that active immunization with formol killed Rikettsia (dead virus) will sometimes immunize completely, and when it does not do this will modify the disease in the direction of greater mildness."