Contributions by Federal Agencies


ton University Medical School. Stimson described him as "solid, de-
pendable and industrious in bacteriology." In i909 he served as presi-
dent of the Society of American Bacteriologists.
  Milton J. Rosenau6 (i869-1946) was the second director of the
United States Hygienic Laboratory from 1899 to i9o9. He was gradu-
ated in medicine from the University of Pennsylvania in 1889 at the
amazingly early age of twenty years and was immediately commis-
sioned in the United States Public Health Service in which he served
nineteen years. During this active growth period of the country, al-
though the major efforts of the service were still control and routine
practices, increased emphasis on investigation was noteworthy. In 190o1,
ten children in St. Louis died from tetanus, apparently as a result of
contamination of diphtheria antitoxin. As often happens, a tragic acci-
dent was necessary to obtain action long recommended. The next year
the Public Health Service was reorganized providing expansion and
full responsibility for all "biologicals," including the preparation
and
standardization of antisera and vaccines. Disinfectants and disinfection
were also part of the day's work and in Rosenau's hands became the sub-
ject of a useful book. Many members of the laboratory, including the
chief, contributed to a comprehensive study of milk and its relation to
public health (i909); this study is still a valuable source for details
and the hygienic aspects of this all important food.
  In 19o6 appeared the first of the most important researches of
Rosenau's Washington period, a short paper with John F. Anderson, his
colleague and successor as director of the laboratories, on A study
of the cause of sudden death following the injection of horse serum. Pro-
ducers of antisera had observed these accidental deaths among guinea
pigs used for standardization of diphtheria and tetanus antitoxins, and
occasional severe reactions, even death, had occurred among treated
patients. To determine, if possible, the basis of such reactions, Ander-
son queried a possible common cause in all these dramatic incidents. In
their papers, the authors refer to the work in this field by von Pirquet
and Schick (1905) and that of Otto the same year and 1907, but they
were not aware of the earlier suggestive papers (1902) by Richet and
Portier. They pressed on with these studies during the next three or
four years with excellent results essentially synchronous with those
from Europe, but arrived at independently. The fact that the hyper-
sensitive or allergic reaction was not due to the antitoxin as such, but
was a specific reaction to the horse protein, that bacterial and other


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