STUDIES ON THE INACTIVATION OF VACCINE VIRUS AND THE ACTION OF CERTAIN SUBSTANCES UPON THE INFECTING POWER OF THE INACTIVATED VIRUS

Vaccine virus, obtained from testicular inoculation shows a high susceptibility to chloroform as compared with ether, toluene, 95 per cent alcohol and acetone. Vaccine virus, after treatment with an amount of chloroform sufficient to render it incapable or only barely capable of originating an eruption in the rabbit's skin, produces a characteristic eruption when injected with the supernatant fluid of embryonic tissue or sarcoma tissue "cultures" or kieselguhr, substances all of which are markedly irritative to the rabbit's skin. Reactivation of the chloroformed vaccine virus is not possible when chloroform has been added to it in such quantity that the injection of large amounts of the treated virus fails to cause an eruption. Whenever reactivation has been accomplished it has been possible to get a vaccine eruption of greater or less intensity by the injection of large amounts of the chloroformed vaccine alone. Embryo and chicken sarcoma "culture" fluids when injected intradermally make the skin susceptible to the localization of the virus introduced intravenously. The bearing of these experiment on the interpretation of Gye' theory of cancer causation is discussed.