Ill 



4. In connection with the two first reports, I may recall that 

 at the International Conference on the Standardisation of Sera 

 and Serological Tests, held at this Ministry under your presi- 

 dency on the 12th-14th December, 1921, it was agreed that 

 international co-operation was needed to ascertain the distri- 

 bution of different types of pneumococci and to determine the 

 best criteria for the production of effective therapeutic sera. 

 The reports now submitted are a contribution to both 

 problems, and will, it is hoped, help to clear the ground. 

 Publication of carefully considered data about the facts and 

 principles involved shortens the time necessary for the attain- 

 ment of fuller results, indicates lines of future investigation 

 on which financial outlay is most likely to yield a good return, 

 and guides investigators into channels of enquiry which are not 

 blind alleys but avenues of progressive discovery. 



5. The fourth report, by Dr. Scott, on " The Distribution 

 and Serological Characteristics of Influenza Bacilli " embodies 

 the results of an attempt to sub-divide this bacillus, which is 

 very widely distributed, into different varieties or types. It 

 was thought that some types might be found to be less 

 intimately associated with disease than others, and that it 

 might be possible to prove the existence of an epidemic strain. 

 The results, however, have not been encouraging. It formed 

 part of the investigations which were undertaken by our field 

 workers during the recent influenza epidemic and is in continua- 

 tion of other and similar work incorporated in the report on the 

 epidemic of 1918-1919. 



6. The salient features of these reports may be set out 

 briefly as follows : — For many years bacteriologists have been 

 endeavouring to find means of reducing disease and mortality 

 caused by pneumococcal infections, amongst which pneumonia 

 is the most serious. The pioneer work, to which Washbourn 

 and Eyre made valuable contributions, broke the ground and 

 gave rise to hopes that the time would come when serum - 

 therapy would be as successful for the treatment of these 

 diseases as it has proved to be in the case of diphtheria. But 

 there have been many disappointments, owing to the many 

 obscurities and complications of the subject. A fresh stimulus 

 to research was given by Neufeld, who observed that pneumococci 

 were not all of the same serological type, and that special attention 

 must be paid to these differences, because a curative anti-serum 

 would not be effective unless it had been prepared with the same 

 type of pneumococcus as that to which the infection was due. 

 This line of thought has been thoroughly worked out by the 

 investigators at the Rockefeller Institute. They have confirmed 

 Neufeld's view that differences in type impose a sharp limit on 

 the efficacy of an anti-serum ; and they have found that the 

 majority of pneumococci isolated from cases of lobar pneumonia 

 are divisible into three main types, though many strains remain 



x (78)17680 Wt 3102-297a/lll 750 7/22 a 2 



