SERUM RESEARCH
ACTIVITIES IN AUSTRALIA BIG SUPPLIES FOR WAR. FIGHTING SERVICES & CIVILIAN COMMUNITY. Since the outbreak of war, Australia's serus laboratories at Melbourne have been working at high pressure in supplying serus, vaccines and other biological products for the fighting services and civilian community. They now manufacture almost the whole range of useful biological products. A Commonwealth Department of Information bulletin, released in New Zealand by the Assistant Australian Trade Commissioner, says that the Australian Government laboratories are now relieving Britain of the task of vaccine supply to other British countries bordering the Pacific and Indian oceans. . Tiie serum laboratories wore established in the early days of World War No. 1 to meet an emergency caused by the cessation of supplies of serum and vaccines from overseas. A staff of about 300, consisting of graduates of human and veterinary medicine, specially trained in bacteriology and pathology, and highly-skilled biochemists, physicists, and botanists, is now conducting brilliant research into every relevant aspect of bacteriology and immunology. The live stock population of the laboratories totals many thousands of guinea pigs, rabbits, mice, rats, horses, cattle, sheep, dogs, donkeys and bandicoots. The department responsible for the production of insulin used in the treatment of diabetics has steadily grown, and the amount of insulin now being regularly issued is very large. Commonwealth pituitary extract is now well established among the practising profession as a sound therapeutic agent, and supplies of the Commonwealth subsidiary standard of pituitary are regularly renewed and checked against the international standard. Thyroid tablets are produced and standardised in terms of thyroxine iodine in accordance with the recommendations of the British Pharmacopoeia. Although the local demand for Jennerian calf lymph for vaccination against smallpox is not great, adequate supplies are constantly maintained in a readily available form to meet any possible epidemic emergency. The vaccine department of the laboratories produces a wide range of vaccines for prevention, or treatment of such diseases as cholera and plague, dysentry, gonorrhoea, influenza, * whooping cough, typhoid fever and coryza, and the streptococcal and staphylococcal infections. Separate departments produce diphtheria and tetanus toxins and also toxoids. The latter are used for the prevention of these diseases in human beings and animals respectively. A special anaerobic department prepares toxin for the production of gas gangrene anti-toxin and other sera. Anti-venenes for the treatment of snakebite of the Australian venomous snakes have been the subject of intensive investigation for the last 10 years, and anti-venene is now available for the most poisonous of the Australian snakes. A large range of tuberculins is prepared by a special department from human and bovine strains of M. tuberculosis for the diagonis of tuberculosis in human beings and animals. Other preparations from similar organisms are also available. In the allergen department a verjlarge number of special extracts for testing and treatment of hay fever and asthma are prepared. These are derived from such diverse sources as grass and other plant pollens, animal hair, dandruff, many foods and miscellaneous substances like house dust, , erris root, insect bodies, etc. The media department supplies se- , veral hundred different types of bac- i teriological medium for use by bacteriologists within the serum laboratories and in the special departments of hospitals and other institutions ■ throughout Australia. Another special ; department prepares various agents for' i the diagnosis of disease as used in the i practice of human and veterinary me- I dicine by pathological departments of hospitals, etc. ’
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Wairarapa Times-Age, 16 July 1941, Page 6
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570SERUM RESEARCH Wairarapa Times-Age, 16 July 1941, Page 6
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