TESTING TURTLE SERUM.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 290, 30 April 1913, Page 8

TESTING TURTLE SERUM.

FIRST EXPERIMENTS NOT SUCCESSFUL.

CRITICISMS OF NEW YORK MEDICAL EXPERTS.

New York, April 7.

Dr. Fricdmann, the Berlin bacteriologist, whose claims in relation to his turtle serum treatment for consumption are filling many newspaper columns daily continues to encounter obstacle after obstacle. It was not until last evening that the German specialist was permitted to make his first public demonstration of the alleged cure. The physicians .present in the tiny operating theatre of the People's Hospital on Second Avenue were not convinced. Dr. Woods Hutchinson, the noted New York surgeon, says:—"The cases were two men of about 40, with pulmonary tuberculosis, and a young woman with bone tuberculosis in the knee joint. Both men were of the chronic fibrous type of disease, and the woman in resting stage; The syringes were of the type used here ten. or ,fifteen years ago, for the administration of morphine/but which have been generally abandoned on account of the difficulty of keeping them sterile. The piston had shrunk and refused to work properly. "Dr. Friedmann was offered more modern springes, but Waved them impatiently aside. "When the vein was actually found and the needle thrust-into it, and the piston driven home, so loosely did it fit to the barrel of the syringe that not only a considerable part of the injection but a deep tinge of blood from the vein itself was in the barrel of the syringe behind the piston when the needle was withdrawn. On Dr. Friedmann's attention being called to this, he said, 'Ah, that was good. Ido not know what results I should get from that injection.' Dr. Friedmann would be wise to get a competent nurse to administer his remedy for him." Dr. Jules Broder was more outspoken still. "This man is another Dr. Cook," he exclaimed. "He seemed to know nothing of even the rudiments of medicine." The reporters swiftly told him these criticisms, but Dr. Friedmann declined to comment.

His brother, Dr. Arthur Friedmann, said: "In two months we will be treating hundreds of patients, and they will be crawling around us begging for our serum."

His agent says Dr. Friedmann was suffering from stage fright, but the newspapers are blaming the Government officials for allowing the public mind to be filled with false hopes. I learn to-night that the Canadian Government has offered Dr. Friedmann facilities for making tests before the leading physicians of Montreal next week.