656 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
of its staff has devised a machine by which formaldehyde can be generated with great rapidity and cheapness, and these machines have been installed upon the boats and in the ambulance stations of the Health Department. .... It has discovered that filters separate bacteria from virus, and also separate the vaccine organism. 1
In this laboratory there is also free treatment for rabies on the Pasteur system. Extensive experiments have been carried on to discover a serum for dysentery, it having been apparently verified that this disease was due to a particular bacillus.
Diagnosis laboratory. This is under the direction of the assist- ant chief of the division of bacteriology, and is devoted to the hatching and testing of all "cultures" sent into the department, either by its own medical inspectors or by private physicians. Every night all "cultures" are collected by the department from its various "stations" throughout the city and brought to the diagnosis laboratory to be tested. Each culture is then hatched out over night, a microscopic slide made of a sample of its con- tents, and the presence of contagious or communicable disease germs or "bugs" easily detected. The results are at once telephoned to the various doctors who sent in the "cultures," so that the latter can know at the beginning of their next day's work the sure result of their diagnosis.
Here a layman will be interested in having pointed out to him under the microscope the differences between the tubercu- lar, the malarial and typhoid-fever, and the dyphtheria bacilli. The slide containing each sample is properly marked, and then filed away for a reasonable length of time, so that, should there be any doubt in the future as to the diagnosis, it may be again brought into service. Sometimes several "cultures" must be taken before the result can be detected with absolute certainty ; and in a case of doubtful diphtheria, for instance, medical inspect- ors and private physicians are encouraged to take a number of "cultures."
Vaccine laboratory. The department now manufactures all its own vaccine, besides a considerable surplus, which it usually
- The Health Department of the City of New York, Compiled by the City Club,
1902.
