Another unusual problem arose out of the fact that several soldiers
had contracted anthrax, both in England and in France, and the shaving
brushes issued were suspected of being the cause. We undertook to
search them for anthrax spores, but found it was too long and tedious
a job for a field laboratory, for the brushes were full of spores of
all kinds. Later on in England anthrax was actually found by other
bacteriologists in some of these brushes, according to reports
published.
These few examples taken at random will serve to demonstrate the
varied character of the work of a field laboratory, and to show that a
certain amount of experience is necessary in order to handle some of
the problems affectively. We were peculiarly fortunate in our combined
experience. Major Rankin, a first rate pathologist and bacteriologist
of the government of Alberta, had been in charge of the government
laboratory at Siam for five years previous to the war, and knew
tropical medicine like a book, while Captain Ellis had carried on
research work for three years in the Rockefeller hospital laboratories
in New York and was thoroughly conversant with all the most recent
work in vaccine and serum therapy. Consequently there was practically
nothing that we could not tackle between the three of us, either in
bacteriology, pathology, sanitation or treatment of epidemic disease.
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