Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 82.djvu/362

358 and personnel of the laboratory were greatly extended. An advisory board was created, consisting of officers from the Army and Navy Medical Corps, a scientist from the Bureau of Animal Industry of the Department of Agriculture, and five men from civil life, who were to be skilled in laboratory work bearing on public health problems. These five at present are Victor C. Vaughan, dean of the School of Medicine of the University of Michigan; William Welch, professor of pathology at Johns Hopkins University; Frank Wesbrook, professor of pathology at the University of Minnesota; Simon Flexner, of the Rockefeller Institute; and William T. Sedgwick, professor of biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Three additions were made to the original divisions of pathology and bacteriology. These were medical zoology, chemistry and pharmacology. Medical zoology embraces the study of parasitic diseases of man. Under pharmacology, drugs are examined as to purity, potency and action, and important work is done on the standardization of drugs. By another act of July, 1902, provision was made for the licensing of all establishments engaged in interstate traffic in viruses, serums, toxins, antitoxins and analogous products. Samples of such products are bought in the open market and tested for purity and strength. The manufacturing establishments are inspected by medical officers, both before and after the license is granted. Fines and suspensions or withdrawal of license are the penalties for false labeling or faulty methods of production.

The laboratory makes a practise of assisting health officers of states and communities which have no reliable laboratory facilities, by analyzing samples of water, as to impurities, infection and potability.