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11 



2 1 1963 



To The Right Hon. Sir Ai.i ki i> Mond, Bart., jy o > n . . 

 .Minister of Health. JD 4 6 



Sir, 



1. I submit four special reports by Dr. Eastwood and his 

 colleagues at the Ministry's Pathological Laboratory on subjects 

 which are of interest and immediate practical importance not- 

 only to bacteriologists but to all public health workers. 



2. The importance of medical research and particularly of 

 research into pneumonia requires no emphasis. This disease 

 is a substantial cause of national mortality. In 1921 it was 

 primarily responsible for 34,708 deaths in England and Wales 

 apart from those due to diseases in which it is the chief secondary 

 complication, for example, measles, whooping-cough and influ- 

 enza. Medical Officers of Health and others have long been 

 drawing attention to the need for further investigation in this 

 field to add to the knowledge for which we are indebted mainly 

 to Neufeld and his colleagues in Germany, to the workers of 

 the Rockefeller Institute in America, and to the work carried 

 out by Wright, Lister and others in South Africa. 



3. The first three reports deal with the pneumococcus and 

 comprise — 



(a) A concise and instructive historical survey of the 

 question of serological races among pneumococci by 

 Dr. Eastwood; 



(6) A study by Dr. Griffith of the strains of pneumococcus- 

 found in this country — the most comprehensive investiga- 

 ti<>n of the kind yet undertaken; and 



(c) A discussion by Dr. Eastwood of the principles 

 underlying the serological differentiation of a bacterial 

 species. 



The last is a subject wit li which Dr. Eastwood is peculiarly 

 competent to deal. It is a criticism of the doctrine of immunity 

 as applicable to the pneumococcus and affects directly the methods 

 at present employed in the preparation of curative sera. It 

 also bears on the question of the significance of the " carrier " 

 (i.e., a healthy person who harbours the germs of infectious 

 disease), a subject to which considerable attention has been 

 devoted in this laboratory, particularly with reference to 



iers of meningococci ami their relation to the spread of 

 Spinal fever. The practical application of this work 



[•parent when we consider the large sums which arc being 

 roenl annually by local authorities in dealing with farriers of 

 diphtheria bacilli and other germs, and the unnecessary dislocation 

 of social and industrial life which inaccurate or ill-founded 

 conceptions on this subject may entail. 



