Living Test Tubes

All living creatures harbor a variety of germs. That fact irked Pasteur and a succession of other bacteriologists. They proved that certain germs caused certain diseases. They could grow pure cultures of such germs in test tubes and petri dishes. But never alone in living creatures. Always other germs were present to contaminate the situation and possibly have an influence on the germs under study. Pasteur and successors longed for germ-free ''living test tubes." Last week Professor James Arthur Reyniers of the University of Notre Dame announced that at last he has raised Pasteur's desire--germ-free guinea pigs.

Although all living creatures harbor germs, they generally acquire the germs after birth. Unborn animals strongly resist the invasion of germs. Therefore Professor Reyniers starts by putting a pregnant guinea pig into a germ-free operating chamber and by Caesarean section taking out her young. Those young he instantaneously puts into a sterile, airtight, air-conditioned cage. They nurse from a glass "mother," drinking sterile synthetic guinea pig milk of Dr. Reyniers' composition. The water and the solid food which they get later is also sterilized before being put into their cage. Portholes let Dr. Reyniers watch the guinea pigs. Two openings sealed with a pair of rubber gloves permit him to reach into the cage to handle the animals, feed and water them, clean the cage without a germ getting by.

Germ-free guinea pigs, Dr. Reyniers noticed, ''are more active and develop heartier appetites than their contaminated brothers and sisters." Whether the tuberculosis, scarlet fever and other diseases which they are going to be infected with differ from such diseases in normally raised guinea pigs now is something for bacteriologists to investigate.

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