Word: sputum
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...point out that the vaccine was shown in Britain to be 80% effective in cutting down TB among exposed adolescents, a rate comparable to that of most other vaccines now in general use. They feel that the value of the tuberculin test has been exaggerated, that X rays and sputum tests are more important and more reliable. BCG vaccine is not perfectly standardized, but the University of Illinois' Research Foundation has pioneered a freeze-drying process by which the vaccine probably can be shipped anywhere and stored as long as four years (it used to deteriorate in ten days...
...wonder drugs," which kill specific kinds of germs, physicians are still handicapped in starting treatment because in many cases they do not know what kind of germ they are fighting. Hence, they do not know which drug to use. If they take a specimen from a patient, e.g., sputum, spinal fluid, they can grow the bacteria from it and eventually identify them, but this takes about a week. In Atlanta, Bacteriologist Max D. Moody of the U.S. Public Health Service described a method for achieving this result within an hour...
...Better yet, doctors from Manhattan's Memorial Center demonstrated a promising and simple procedure for detecting lung cancers early. With a deep cough, the patient brings up sputum into a little bottle of jsopropyl alcohol. (He can take the bottle home overnight.) A Papanicolaou smear (TIME, Aug. 21, 1950) shows whether cancerous cells are present. Remote general practitioners can use the technique if they mail the bottle to a qualified laboratory...
...John Buddingh of Louisiana State University reported a quicker test for TB. Sputum or spinal fluid from a suspected case is injected into a fertilized egg. Microscopic study within four to six days will show whether tubercle bacilli are present. The current method with cultures or guinea pigs takes four to six weeks. ¶ Polio struck early at Prairie Village, Kans. (pop. 9,500), and, with eight cases reported, the Office of Defense Mobilization allocated 1,000 cc of scarce gamma globulin. Not all exposed children got the shots; injections were given instead to every third or fourth youngster...
...know whether the new drugs, given over long periods, will prove too poisonous for the patient to tolerate. Doctors want to know much more. Will the germs learn to resist the new drugs and live with them, as they often do with streptomycin? If a patient's sputum is free of germs a month after treatment is started, will it still be clear a year later, or will he suffer a shattering relapse...