IV 



THE WEIL-FELIX REACTION 



THE Weil-Felix reactions and the necessary controls were done 

 by Mr. Henry Pinkerton. The two cultures of Bacillus pro- 

 teas X 19 used were given to us by the Pasteur Institute in 

 Paris, through the kindness of Dr. H. Violle. These cultures 

 were designated as Metz and Syrie, and were respectively iso- 

 lated in Metz in 1918 during the German occupation from a 

 case of typhus from the Rhine provinces and in Syria in 1917 

 in a Turkish laboratory from a case of typhus from the neigh- 

 borhood of Constantinople. 



The technic employed was based upon the directions issued 

 by the Department of Pathology of the University of Oxford 

 on behalf of the Medical Research Committee. Both the ma- 

 croscopic and microscopic methods were employed, carried out 

 as follows: 



1. MACROSCOPIC METHOD 



Appropriate dilutions of the suspected serum were made in 

 small agglutination tubes, by means of a graduated pipette, 

 and an amount of the saline suspension of the organism equal 

 to one and one-half times the volume of the diluted serum was 

 added to each tube. The saline suspension of the organism was 

 made by washing off the growth from a 24-hour glucose agar 

 slant with 6 c.c of normal saline solution. 



For routine work on typhus sera, the dilutions 1-100, 1-200, 

 1-400, 1-800, and 1-1600 were used for the Weil-Felix reaction, 

 and dilutions of 1-25 and 1-200 were used for the Widal test. 

 (In cases of especial interest, other dilutions were used.) 



In the case of the Weil-Felix reaction, these tubes were in- 

 cubated at 37 C. for two hours and the results were read after 

 standing at room temperature for fifteen or twenty minutes. 

 In the case of the Widal test, incubation was carried on for two 



34 



