Tuberculosis & Tubers

There seemed to be two comical elements connected with the prize which the National Jewish Hospital for Consumptives at Denver received last fortnight from the American Association for the Advancement of Science--"for the most important contribution to the study of tuberculosis during the last 10 years." One was a potato, an ordinary Irish tuber; the other the petiteness of the honorarium, $500.

That little sum, nonetheless, was a fine accolade to the oldest national free tuberculosis hospital in the U. S. Jews built it in 1890 when their co-religionists emigrated in waves from their Polish villages to contract consumption in Manhattan's crowded slums. Now the hospital, supported mainly by Jews, has non-Jews on its staff and among its patients.

The potato was more significant than the money. After biologists had fooled around with the tuberculosis bacillus for almost 50 years, they had developed two standard methods of discovering the bacilli in sputum. One was to stain a smear with dyes and search for the germs with a microscope. That was crude and inaccurate. The other was to inject suspected sputum into guinea pigs, creatures unusually susceptible to tuberculosis. That was slow and expensive. A quicker, surer method of diagnosis was needed.

The National Jewish Hospital has as director of its research laboratory Harry John Corper, Chicago-born pathologist. He has as co-worker Nao Uyei, U. S.-educated Japanese organic chemist. The two pottered around with sputum, acids, dyes and mediums on which bacteria grow. And eventually they found that sulphuric or hydrochloric acid would best dissolve the elements of the sputum undesirable in isolating the tuberculosis bacteria, that crystal violet dye best brought out the shape of the germs, that they flourished best on a chunk of potato. Now practically every tuberculosis hunter uses their test.