46 



THE BUREAU OF SCIENCE 



Nature of examination. 



1912 



Blood -- 



Blood culture 



Widal test 



Wassermann test 



Urine ; 



Sputum 



Faeces 



Gonococci 



Leprosy 



Plague -- 



Rats for plague 



Rabies _ 



Autopsy 



Histological examination. 



Water 



Miscellaneous 



3,951 



1913 



Total . 



3,925 

 22,733 

 15,971 



59 



455 



742 



4,594 



23,450 



226 



388 



727 



6,974 



5.770 



34, 530 



20,522 



848 



45 



(«) 



11 



130 



606 



1,077 



57. 916 



51, 941 153. 220 



* Included under miscellaneous. 



In many cases the requests accompanying these samples were 

 for more than one kind of examination; as, for example, red 

 corpuscle count, total and differential white corpuscle count, 

 haemoglobin determination, and malarial parasites in one sample 

 of blood; or, Trichiiris, Ascaris, Ankylostoma, monads, amoebae. 

 Stroll gyloides, OxyiiHs, Taenia, Opisthorchis, Balantidium, blood 

 cells, mucus, and pus in one sample of faeces. Therefore, the 

 table does not indicate the total number of examinations made, 

 but only the number of requests received. 



INVESTIGATIONS 



On account of the vacancies in the staff and the constantly 

 increasing amount of routine work in the laboratory, it has 

 been necessary repeatedly to take men from research work to 

 help with the routine work or to send into the field to make 

 special investigations. This has in many cases seriously inter- 

 fered with the research work that was being conducted. 



Plague. — In the course of the plague outbreak during the past 

 year, some investigations were made on the diagnosis, transmis- 

 sion, and pathology of bubonic plague. The importance 

 of blood culture and the uselessness of the agglutination test 

 in the diagnosis of plague, the part played by phagocytosis in 

 the resistance of man to plague infection, and the presence of 

 numerous plague bacilli in comparatively insignificant skin 

 lesions which indicate the possibility of direct infections with 

 bubonic plague have been demonstrated. The role of rat fleas 



