I 2 



Scientific Proceedings (35). 



iodine and sheep's pituitary from the Ithaca slaughter house 

 yielded only a trace. 



Our experiment was performed at the suggestion of Professor 

 Schafer with the view of determining whether iodine appears in the 

 pituitary after thyroidectomy. We removed the thyroid glands 

 completely from ten sheep. Each was weighed at the time of re- 

 moval and again when dried, and the iodine estimated. Great 

 variation was found in the ratio of thyroid to body weight in differ- 

 ent individuals, but the iodine corresponded pretty closely to the 

 weight of the gland. 



Five of the sheep were infected by a parasite and died at inter- 

 vals of from six to thirty-two days after the operation. The re- 

 maining five showed no symptoms and were killed from forty- 

 seven to fifty-six days after throidectomy. After death the pitui- 

 tary was removed, weighed, dried and put aside until all had been 

 collected and then on account of the small size of the individual 

 glands, they were examined for iodine collectively by Hunter's 

 method. None was found. The weight of the substance avail- 

 able for examination was 1.02 grams. In this amount 0.005 

 milligram could have been detected with certainty. 



8 (418) 



Parabiosis as a test for circulating antibodies in cancer. 

 By PEYTON ROUS. 



[From the Laboratories of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical 

 Research, New York.~\ 

 Sauerbruch and Heyde have united animals side by side, with 

 an opening between the peritoneal cavities and suture of the 

 apposed skin and connective tissue. They find that healing 

 between two individuals thus joined brings with it a considerable 

 physiological intimacy. Ranzi and Ehrlich, following them, have 

 demonstrated that circulating antibodies pass with ease from one 

 of such a pair to the other. On this evidence it seems possible to 

 utilize the condition (parabiosis) for experiments on the question 

 of the existence or non-existence of circulating antibodies for 

 cancer. Accordingly, I have united white rats with a growing 

 tumor, the result of transplantation, to others which had proved 

 themselves resistant to the same type of neoplasm. Careful watch 



