Medicine: 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...

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