Word: wassermanns
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...simplicity for patient and doctor, the serum test closely resembles the Wassermann test for syphilis. Its originators recommended that doctors use it the same way: take the blood sample and send it to a laboratory, instead of trying to complete the process themselves...
...last week from the American Association for Cancer Research, meeting in Detroit's Hotel Fort Shelby. If the news proved to be as good as it looked, cancer fighters were in possession of something they have long been looking for: a blood test, almost as simple as the Wassermann, which could divide people into two groups-those who may have cancer, and those...
...widely used Wassermann test for syphilis has its faults. If the tested patient has recently been vaccinated, the Wassermann may be "positive" - the standard indication of syphilis. It may also be positive if he has any one of a long list of diseases, e.g., chicken pox, measles, malaria, pneumonia, meningitis...
Robert A. Nelson, a young (26) Johns Hopkins bacteriologist, and his co-workers have taken the first steps toward developing a more accurate test than the Wassermann. In the blood of syphilitics, they found specific antibodies (counter-substances) against Treponema pallidum, the spirochete that causes syphilis. Announcement of their discovery caused a stir last week at a symposium held in Washington by the American Venereal Disease Association and the U.S. Public Health Service...
Whether the new treatments will prove a permanent cure remains to be seen. When arsenic was first in vogue for syphilis, a few treatments often healed the sore and temporarily made Wassermann tests negative; ten years or so later, the patient sometimes suffered from the late stages of syphilis (insanity, paralysis and heart disease). Conclusive results of this or any other penicillin routine will not be known for at least ten years...