264 



smears from cases, it cannot be stained by the T B method if 

 it has first been treated with xylol & alcohol. — We are busy 

 getting set to leave Feb 26th, hoping to spend 3 weeks 

 in Kashmir. They say that the Kashmiri women are the most 

 beautiful in Asia. 



Official account of this growth of Hansen's bacillus (long 

 seen in the lesions of leprosy but never before obtained as cul- 

 ture upon artificial media) appeared in Hektoen's journal. 

 Less than four pages told the story [77], with the half of these 

 taken up by photomicrographs. He repeated it, somewhat 

 later, with a bit of poetry added [78]. Success had come to 

 him by preparing a proper ground for the organism and 

 enveloping it in a proper atmosphere. So he had beaten up hen's 

 egg (both white and yolk) with oleic acid and glycerine and 

 half stiffened the mixture with a bit of agar. He had then 

 arranged this semisolid mass in such fashion that he could vary 

 the amount of oxygen and carbon dioxide contained in the 

 atmosphere above it. The methods employed were those which 

 he had earlier found optimal for the growth of other "acid- 

 fasts." Taking a bit of the blood oozing from the freshly 

 "snipped" surface of an actively growing leprous lesion — he 

 had made sure that it really contained the causative organism 

 by direct microscopic examination — he spread it upon the 

 semisolid medium. In four to six weeks, growth appeared in 

 samples from three different patients; and from these primary 

 growths he succeeded in subculturing the organism. But this 

 was ticklish business, for the organism refused to develop 

 unless fed this special medium and only when air-conditioned 

 as already described. Even so, after more weeks, though it did 

 not die, it refused to grow further. "Best growth," was assured 

 "in cultures kept first at partial oxygen tension (little O2 but 

 CO2 present) for a month, after which they were kept under 

 O2 and CO2." 



WHERRY'S son William arrived in Manila in time to 

 complete the family fold before its departure for 

 India. A first stopping place was Agra — which thus saw again 

 its once boyish visitor as a somewhat tired man. "It is getting 

 very hot here," he wrote (March 21, 1930) ; "and we will be 



