Evening star., 1942-02-15
French Woman Find!
Deadly Element Of
1ubercIe Bacillus
Refugee Scientist Tells
Of Discovery Made
Before Fall of Frunce
By THOMAS r. HENRY.

BY THOMAS r. HENRY.
Isolation from the tubercle bacil-
has of a substance so deadly that
q 500th of q milligram of it injected
In = guinea pigs hip will kill the
animal in from four to six weeks
with lung LESSONS very similar to
those of virulent tuberculosis has
just been reported to the National
tuberculosis Association here.
A 500th of milligram is about Is
millionths of an ounce.
The discovery is regarded by some
Of the worlds most eminent bacteri-
ologists as one of the most funda-
mental In the field of tuberculosis
In the last half century.
But the story of the discovery, as
revealed by the young, black haired
French woman physicist who made
1t. and who now is in New York, is
even more colorful than the work
itself. -.
Aide to Prof. Perrin.
The physicist is Mile. Nine Chou
croun, for more than a decade lab
oratory aide to Prof. Jean Perrin,
professor of physics at the Sorbonne
and Nobel Prize winner. Prof. Per-
rin also is in the United States.
Mile. Choucroun fled from Paris
three days before the fall of the
city in June, 1910, with some of the
guinea pigs injected with the deadly
substance as almost her sole pos
session. Literally foot by foot, so
congested was the traffic, she made
her way to Bordeaux. When she
got there the most priced of her
animals-those who seemed to show
q curious resistance to the injec-
tions-were dead.
Afterwards she was able to con-
tinue her work at Lyons for a time
until the experiments were shut of
by the inability to get any more
experimental animals or laboratory
materials. All had been comman-
deered by the Germans.
Seven weeks ago Mile. Choucroun
finally was able to reach the United
States.
Were More Patient.
Nearly 10 years ago, 1t is ex-
planned, three American workers
discovered that dead and dried
tubercle bacilli suspended in paraffin
oil produced a much more striking
reaction in injections than when
they were mixed with distilled
water. The experiments were care
fully controlled at the Pasteur In
stitute. 1t was presumed that in
some way the mixture of bacilli
and oil was more potent than Bacilli
alone. but nobody knew why.
Mile. Couchroun got the idea that
the oil might be extracting some
thing from the complex chemical
structure Of the germ. BY various
complex physical methods, and es-
pecially by use of the super solvent
dioxane, she obtained a precipitate
from the oil which had been asso-
ciated with the tubercle bacilli.
Thenceforth, she found the oil
itself when injected into animals
was harmless. But injections of
preparations OF the precipitate killed
them in q few weeks. The LESSONS
we're the same as those of tubercu-
losis obtained from the bacillus-oil
injections. But there were no tu-
bercle bacilli recoverable from the
lungs.
Refused to Believe Test.
When she reported her dis
coveries with the oil to DR.. Alfred
Boquet, Frances foremost authority
on tuberculosis, he refused to believe
1t at first. He insisted that some
actual bacilli had become mixed
with the oil. The precipitate exper-
iment, however, was conclusive.
From that point on Mile. Choucroun
and Prof Boquet worked together.
After obtaining the precipitate,
the next step was to break 1t down.
It was an extremely minute frac-
ton OF the original dead bacillus
which had been placed in the oil.
So minute was it, in fact, that no
one ever had expected before that
anything was being taken from the
germ.
But, Mile. Choucroun has since
developed, only a very minute frac-
ton of the precipitate really is of
any consequence. Patiently she has
split it up into its component parts.
Several substances show some po-
tency, but only cne the extreme
potency of the extract she now has
IN hand.
Lungs Were x-rayed.
All the experiments with guinea
pigs have been carried on under the
supervision of Prof. Boquet. Lungs
Of injected guinea pigs have been
X-rayed at various stages before
death under the supervision of
Frances foremost X-ray authority.
The start of the malady in the
lungs has been detected few days
after the injections.
Mile. Choucroun was able to
bring nothing to the United States
with her.
Il expect" she said, ito repeat
all my experimental work from the
beginning to convince American
scientists that 1 actually found
things as I describe them.
All ask now is a laboratory to
work in and enough to live on
On the eve of the German in
vasion Of Paris. Mile. Choucroun
published the first results of her
expeH Hments in the Comics Rendus
of thS French Academy of Sciences.
Th$ brief account may we'll be
one of the classics of science in the
future. Because of the stirring
events which followed so soon it was
almost completely lost sight of, and
since then Mile Choucroun has not
been in a position to make any more
publications.
r.