PLAGUE RESEARCH LABORATORY.]
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were accepted by the Government of India * : the Laboratory itself thus becoming an Im-
perial concern. Fortunately, a sufficiently largo placo was available in the old Government
House at Parel, and hither the Laboratory has been finally moved, and hero it will have
room to expand as circumstances may demand.
The new Laboratory at Government House, Parel, was formally opened by H. E. the
Governor, Lord Sandhurst, on the 10th and 2Cth of August 1899, in the presence of a large
and representative gathering of Europeans and natives. The following accounts of these
functions are taken from the Times of India :—
" The new Plague Laboratory at Parel was yesterday (10th August 1899") evening
formally opened by His Excellency the Governor of Bombay. There were a large number
of the principal European residents present, and many influential natives were also in
attendance. The entire premises had been most carefully prepared for the occasion, so that
visitors would be able to see the whole process of the manufacture of plague prophylactic.
Besides this, there weie several micioscopes through which might bo seen various forms of
bacteria, and excellent plates made clearer, in certain instances, the life history of disease-
germs. At every point were those capable and willing to explain, and few could have left
the building without being wiser in some particular than when they entered. His Excellency
appeared to take the deepest interest in all he saw and heard, and great credit is due to the
officers of the Laboratory for the excellent arrangements which had been made. These
officers, it may be mentioned, are :—Major Bannerman, Captain Milne, Dr. Marsh, Dr.
Maitland Gibson, Dr. Hanna, Dr. Staikey, Dr. Paymaster, Dr. Kapadia, and Dr. Cordeiro.
" After the tour of inspection had been completed, all returned to the porch, where, at
the request of His Excellency, Major Bannerman gave a brief account of the prophylactic
and its action. His speech was as follows:—
"Your Excellency, Mr. Woodburn, Ladies and Gentlemen— It is an unexpected pleasure
that has fallen to my lot, as I was not aware that 1 should be called upon to explain the
manufacture of the prophylactic, which you have just had demonstrated to you. I will try,
however, to explain in as few words as possible this somewhat technical subject. The first
thing to do is to find a suitable medium or soil on which to grow the plague-germ. The
process of preparation you have all seen and had demonstrated to you by Captain Milne.
Nothing has been hidden from yon, for there is nothing requiring concealment, you have seen
the goat's flesh minced up, mixed with acid, digested by heat, filtered, neutralised and finally
sterilised in the large steriliser. We have now got our soil ready for sowing, so the seed
must be procured. This is got, as you all know, from the bubo of a plague-patient. Now,
in agriculture two things are required to produce a good crop, viz., a good soil and good
seed. Similarly, our seed must be pure and unmixed with the seeds of any other disease,
for we wish to have a pure growth. For this purpose we first sow our plague-seed in a tube
full of jelly, on the surface of which it is spread out. I trust you have all noticed those
tubes of jelly as you passed through the rooms. Two days after it is sown we can tell by
looking at the surface of the jelly, whether the growth now visible is pure plague or not,
just as any of you can tell the difference between the buttercups and daisies growing in
your gardens, or as you can pick out your friends in a crowd by ' head mark' as it were.
To make assurance doubly sure, however, we take a few of those plague-bacilli from the
jelly tube, and sow them in a small flask of clear broth and watch to see whether these long
silky stalactites are formed, which, I am sure, you must all have admired in the dark room
inside. This appearance is an absolutely certain sign that we are dealing with the plague-
germ, for no other known germ produces similar stalactites. This important discovery
made by Haffkine, renders it possible for us to make an anti-plague vaccine, and to save
thousands of lives which would otherwise be lost. When we are thus quite certain, then,
that we are dealing with the plague-germ alone, and have no other germs in our flask, we
transfer its contents to the long-nosed Pasteur flask, which you saw Dr. Maitland Gibson
working with. By means of this ingenious contrivance we can sow any number of large
fermentation flasks. These large flasks are then placed on tables in the dark room, and
allowed to ferment for six weeks, when the prophylactic is ready for use, after the live germs
in the flasks have been killed by heat. Dining this period of fermentation the bacilli have
been excreting inanimate poison into the broth. In the small bottles then that we send out
there are two things, viz., (1) dead plague-bacilli ; (2) lifeless poisons excreted into the
broth by these bacilli before they were killed. This mixture is what is injected under your
skin when you are inoculated, and I must now explain how protection from plague can be
thus secured. It has been proved that all diseases such as plague, cholera, typhoid fever,
etc., are caused by living germs, each disease having a germ or seed of its own. Just as in
* Government of India's letter in the Home Department, Medical, No. 374 of 4th March 1899.