Medicine: Progress Report, Jun. 24, 1946

Guarded communiqués reported four important breakthroughs on the tuberculosis front. Yet strategists and tacticians alike muffled their enthusiasm in public; the fight was not yet won; TB was still the No. 1 killer of U.S. citizens between 15 and 35.

Next to Koch. The biggest news last week came from Buffalo, where three tuberculosis societies held a joint convention.* Bacteriologist Rene Jules Dubos of the Rockefeller Institute had at last discovered a method of cultivating TB bacteria, simply and quickly, in test tubes. The basis of Dubos' method is a synthetic detergent made by...

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