President. The Society of American Bacteriologists at University of Rochester Medical School last week elected Alice Catherine Evans of Washington president. She did not attend the meetings, for she was bedridden in Washington with malta fever, contracted three years ago while experimenting with the germs. They cause an undulating fever, quite similar to typhoid or typhus fever. Goats usually are responsible for malta fever in humans. Professionally Miss Evans is a member of the U. S. Public Health Service at Washington.
Immunity. Dr. Malcolm Herman Soule of the University of Michigan presented a theory that disease germs occur in two forms—one virulent, the other relatively harmless. The presence of the virulent types in the blood incites some agent (its nature yet unknown) to dissociate the virulence, leaving the germs in their mild form. This gentle type the body cells & fluids can easily destroy. It is the presence of that dissociating power, Dr. Soule believes, that renders people immune to disease, rather than any specific germicidal activity of the body fluids.
Nomenclature. The association made some progress on the difficult problem of naming germs.