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DEPARTMENT OF 
BACTERIOLOGY AND IMMUNOLOGY 
 
July 13, 1929 
Aldo Leopold 
421 Chemistry Building 
University of Wisconsin 
Madison, Wis. 
Dear Mr. Leopold: 
This letter is in answer to yours of July 9th. 
I am very much interested in the question which has been 
discussed by you and Carlos Avery concerning the annual testing of 
rabbits to determine whether special precautions should be taken by 
hunters to prevent their contracting tularemia. Certainly I do not 
know at the present time just how one could conduct a practical test, 
in the state of our present knowledge, to determine the situation. 
That is one of the issues which is being considered by the cooperative 
work now taking place between the Department of Bacteriology, the Minn- 
esota State Board of Health and the Minnesota Department of Game and 
Fish. If sick rabbits were picked up and brought in for examination 
and were found to be dying of tularemia, it would settle the question 
of the presence of active tularemia in that vicinity, but Just what 
that means, again, as to the danger of contracting tularemia, is still 
a question. 
The average State Bbard of Health could easily be equipped 
to test rabbits for the presence of tularemia. Such work, however, 
would require very special laboratory facilities and animal rooms which 
could be used for no other purpose. The danger of tularemia is great 
enough so that it should be carried out only with very special precaa- 
tions. Miss Wade and I have determined that, at ordinary temperatures, 
material older than three days is unfit for active diagnosis. 
 
Yours very truly, 
R~. G. Green 
 
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