The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, May 24, 1917, Page 9

orld Knows of A. C. Work Germany Was First to Recognize the Achievement of Two College Scientists of the Northwest, and Europe Now Links Their Names With the Discovery BY E. B. FUSSELL 3 COUPLE of years ago Dr. Van Es .and Schalk were en- gaged in serious research work and were using as part of their apparatus a centri- fuge, which is amachine for :sepa- rating @ifferent .classes «©f ma- terials, operating on the same Ppringipal as a ¢ream separator. All &t once something popped. Van s and Schalk investigated. 'The wcentri- fuge was broken. "They couldn't ;g0 ©n with their experiment until it was re- puired and it couldn't be repairedl any place but at the factory. Regretfully, they padked thet centrifuge wip and ship- ped it to the factory. Rather, ithey gave it to =@ trudkman and ‘told him to ship it. 'They wanted it shipped by express, but the truck @river, probalily thinking ito save the «ollege a little meney, shipped it by freight instead. The writer wasn't on thand when fthe truckman came ‘badk to ‘tell Van s the had :shipped ithe broken ccentrifuge by freight but T imagine the doctor's face feH a little when he figured wup and found ‘that it would take #bout eight ‘weeks to get the machine ‘back again. I ‘imagine alse this didn't last For ‘but a minute, ‘because an idea occurred to Van Hs and his face lighted up. “Schalk,” T imagine he said, “we haven't a thing to-do for the mext eight weeks except to teach our cclasses and our work with the tuberculin anfl mal- lein :and ‘hog cholera sernm and our correspendlence and so on. Let's cut loose and have a high old time. Let's - 'wild cat on avian ‘tuberculosis.” And I can imagine Schalk beaming back at him and shaking hands and saying: “Attaboy.” THEY “WILDCAT” IN “AVIAN TUBERBULOSIS” M™Maybe, being a college professor, ‘Schalk didn't say ‘“Attaboy,” but he meant it. Anyhow, the two “wildcat- ters” started a series of investigations of avain tuberculosis. Awain tuber- <coulosis is the brand that chickens and «other fowls and birds «contract. ‘There are :a lot more chickens that die of tuberculosis than most poultry fanciers vealize. When a fowl begins to droop and lese weight and ;gradually fades away and finally dies there is a .good chance that the trouble with it is not the pip but the “T B.” The worst of it is that the chances are strong that the one tubercular chicken will give the disease to the rest of the flock, If the @oultryman knew the hen in question thad the disease he could kill it and save the others, but in the past there has been mo practical method of de- termining whether a chicken had tubercutesis or merely a tempo- gary indisposition. The most com- mon method of testing a cow for tuberculosis is to give it a dose of tuberculin and then test its tempera- ture. If the tem- perature goes up it means that it has tuberculosis. This is what is known ®s the “thermal test.” This = has been tried omn chickens, -but it doesn’t work: It isn't so much that it is difficult to-teach a hen to keep a thermometer under ' §ts tongue as it is that a tubercular chicken doesn’t re- gpond in tempera- ture to the tuber- culin. But there is another tuberculin test for._cattle, known as the “in- tra-dermal test.” By this method a little tuberculin is injected under the skin. If a swelling results it is evi- dence of tubercu- losis. It was the idea of Van Es and Schalk to apply this method to chickens. Bo they tried in- jecting a little tuberculin into the | Hereisthe story of a great discovery made at the North Dakota Agricultural college, an institution that has distinguished itself for its leadership and determined interest in the welfare of the farmers of the Northwest. The discovery was a method for detecting tuberculosis in fowls. The ““avian tuberculin” for making the tests is now being manufactured at the college for distribu- tion to those who keep chickens, ducks, turkeys or geese. Throughout the world this test is kmown to scientists by the names of the two North Dakota men who diseovered it. The veterinary department is busy with several lines of investigation and manufaé¢ture that mean the saving of hundreds «of thousands of dol- lars to livestock producers. = - Part of the A. C. poultry flock enjoying a hot day. Through' the discovery of a sure test for detecting tuberculosis in fowls, made at the North Dakota Agricul- tural College, all chickens, ducks, turkeys, etc., in the college flock have been freed from this dread disease. combs and wattles of suspected chickens. In some cases easily noticeable swellings at the point of injection followed this treatment. These fowls were killed and * sure enough, proved to be tubercular. ‘Time -after time this was tried and time after time it worked. A tuberculin obtained from cows was used in some of the experiments. In about 50 per cent of the cases tubercular fowls re- acted to ‘this treatment, which proved that 'bowine tuberculosis and avain tuberculosis are at least first .cousins. ITS A ONE HUNDRED PER CENT WINNER But the important thing was that in 100 per cent of the cases tested with avian tuberculin, that {is tuberculin obtained from birds, tubercular fowls reacted. In other words, Van Is and Schalk had discovered an entirely new and entirely practical method of de- termining the existence of tuberculosis in poultry. They proved it was prac- tical by freeing the state college flock entirely of its tubercular members. Dr. Van Es 'bleeding a horse for serum production. NINE Incidentally, the veterinary department began putting out avian tuberculin, as well as the bovine tuberculin, the mal- lein and hoeg cholera serum. Science takes no account of geo- graphical lines. It welcomes a dis- covery made in North Dakota just as heartily as one from Borneo, from Alaska or from a Turopean capital. The first notice of the discovery made by Van Es and Schalk was given in a German .scientific magazine. Next the iscientists «f Holland, Dr. Van Hs' native land, began commenting upen it and writing descriptive articles. Teo- day, in whatever .country men of science refer to the ‘intra-dermal method of determining whether a fowl has tuberculosis, and in whatever Jlanguage the reference is made, they call it ‘the “Van Es-Schalk test.” FARMERS’' PROBLEMS ARE GLADLY WELCOMED There is a world of other work that Van Ts and his associates in the veterinary .department do for the farmers of North Dakota. He is ex- officio ‘bacteriologist and .consulting veterinarian of the livestock sanitary ‘board and in this connection he gets something like 1400 letters a year from North Dakota farmers asking his ad- vice on one thing and anether. All these letters .get answered and many of them involve lots of work. 1 was in his office the other day when he was opening his mail. The first letter said: “I am sending the head of a cow that I killed because I thought it had tuber- oulesis.” The writer wanted it examined to see whether his judgment was correct. Another farmer sent a sample of a diseased eye of @ cow. Another sent a sample of milk which he ‘wanted analyzed. A fourth complained that his sows were farrowing hairless pigs and wanted to knew the reason. It is interesting, too, to see the actual work of preparing tuberculin. Van Es feeds the tuberculosis germs for three months on beef broth. When they get big/and fat and sassy he kills them by “heat and drains the broth off through a filter, this broth, after further treat- ment, becoming the commercial tuber- culin. He has two or three boxes full of the dead tuberculosis germs. They are soft and yellow and look something like stulphur. INSTRUCT TWO HUNDRED STUDENTS A YEAR And besides all this, which is directly to the benefit of the farmer, Van Hs and his associates give instruction to 200 students a year. The college gives at present only a two-year course in veterinary medicine and surgery, send- ing its students away to get their de- grees in other insti- tutions. But in ad- dition to those stu- ients taking courses leading to veterin- ary degrees, prac- tically all the stu- dents in agricul- ture also take ele- mentary veterinary courses and there is also a big dele- gation each year of short term students from the farms for practical work. Dr. Van Es, who heads the depart- ment, has been with the’ agricul- tural college for 15 years. Before that he practiced his profession at Mo- bile, Ala., and also found time to teach in a medical school there. He is a big man with a grizzled Van Dyke beard and mnose " glasses who would pass for a scientist any- where and he has more than his looks to back him up. He has also a loyal working group of assistants, men and women of the kind whose idea of sky- larking is a “wild- cat” investigation of some frivelous subject like avian tuberculosis. and hard- -'i. AR e e T B e o 7 - S