Report of the Committee of Management and Medical Director : 1947 / Papworth Village Settlement.

  • Papworth Village Settlement (Cambridge, England)
Date:
1947
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report of the Committee of Management and Medical Director : 1947 / Papworth Village Settlement. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    19/26 (page 19)
    This involved a large amount of histological and cultural work, which was undertaken by Miss B. E. Smith, with the assistance of a patient who has a London Science degree and is also experienced in histological research. (d) Growing infected tissues in vitro. We have also made the pilot experiments for a study which we intend to take up as the third in this series of investigations. We removed the draining mediastinal glands one week to three weeks after intrapulmonary infection and grew parts of tissue in vitro in the usual way. We found that the tissue explants, although containing only a very small number of bacilli, were rapidly over¬ grown by a mass of bacilli. In spite of this, however, the cultures themselves grew well, produced a normal outgrowth, the cell of which contained small numbers of bacilli, apparently without suffering any noticeable damage. We used virulent bovine bacilli for this experiment and varied the infected dose, and we hope that these experiments will throw some light on the mechanism of tuberculous infection. 3. Methods for the assessment of the action of chemotherapeutic agents. Many of the experiments mentioned under (I) and (2) can be made useful for a study of chemotherapeutic problems. I have studied carefully during the present year the require¬ ments arising from streptomycin treatment and tried to make our methods useful for the clinical use of the new drug. The technique which 1 have evolved includes : (I) Micro¬ culture for sensitivity tests ; (2) In-ovo infection with subsequent culturing of the amniotic fluid and parts of the embryonic membranes ; and (3) Experimental infection with subsequent tissue-culturing of the draining glands. The last two methods would be a valuable method for assessing the action of chemotherapeutic drugs in the living organism. In the next year our work in Papworth will be mainly concerned with this line of investigation. The nature of the research-work done during the past year required a very high standard in media making, as we had to use a variety of artificial as well as biological media. Miss Johnson, who is in charge of this section of our work, did at first make our media at the Department of Pathology in Cambridge, with the kind permission of Professor Dean, where she had the advice of the technician in charge of the media-kitchen. Gradually, however, the preparation of our media has been transferred to Papworth. We have found plasma embryo extract mixtures an excellent biological medium, and are now trying to compare it in micro-culture with the Dubos medium. Professor Dubos of the Rockefeller Institute has seen our work when he was at Cambridge and has given us very valuable information on the application of this method. Other Activities It has been necessary to devote all our time to develop the research programme outlined above. Records were filed to keep the “Papworth Families” up to date. Evaluation of results of our previous work on the assessment of working-capacity is now near completion. Publications during 1947 : (1) Brieger, E. M., and Robinow, C.F. : Jnl. of Hygiene, in print. (2) Brieger, E. M., Crowe, G. R., Cosslett, V. E. : Nature, Dec. 20th, 1947, Vol 160 p. 864* (3) Fell and Brieger : Jnl. of Hygiene, 1947, Vol. 45 p. 359. Demonstrations : At Leeds in September 1947 : Conference of the Electron Microscope Group, Institute of Physics. At Cambridge : First meeting of the East- Anglian Pathologists on Electron Microscopy. THE SIMS WOODHEAD MEMORIAL LABORATORY D. Barron Cruickshank, L.R.C.P. & S. (Bdin.), LD.S. (Edin.), D.P.H. (Camb.) Technical Asst. : F. Boot, A.I.M.LT. Over a period of years the routine “repor¬ ting” functions of the laboratory have steadily increased, particularly in the bacteriology and haematology sections. Contrasting a few items for 1944 and 1947 we find, e.g. Micro¬ scopic preparations” 2323 : 5365, ^‘Penicillin Sensitivity Tests and Dispensing 0 : 1^73, “Transfusion grouping and cross-matching” 0 : 854. Not only has this increased work called for additions to the technical staff but has also absorbed an increasing proportion [19]