These articles are cleaned twice daily. At the rear of each row of stalls is a drain connecting directly with the sewer to carry off the wash water, the stalls being flushed twice daily with hot water.

Not an iota less is the care bestowed upon the horse. Each day it is thoroughly cleaned for about fifteen minutes by rapidly revolving brushes driven by electricity. Almost every particle of dust and dirt is thereby removed, such treatment said to be equivalent to two hours of currying and brushing by hand.

The next step in the preparation of the horse for the manufacture of serum consists in his immunization. In the cleaning room, built of white enameled brick and provided with sanitary washstand, the horse is washed from head to foot with tepid water and antiseptics, the feet being carefully scrubbed.

The horse next enters the operating room which is entered by none others than the cleaned horse and the operators. Visitors may witness the operation through a window. This room is said to

satisfy the aseptic requirements of the most exacting surgeons. It is lined with porcelain tiling, there are no outside windows, light being obtained by means of a sky-light or by electricity. The necessary tables are constructed of enameled iron and plate glass. A specially designed operating stall is used but it is only occasionally necessary to strap the horse to it since the operation is practically painless and the animal soon becomes used to it.

During the immunization period, the horses are brought daily

into this room to receive their injections of toxin. The dose is small at first, but is gradually increased as the animal's tolerance becomes greater. So great does this tolerance become in individual cases that sufficient toxin may be injected into a single horse as would kill twenty-five hundred men.

The period of immunization lasts from four to eight months beore a horse will yield an antitoxin of sufficient potency. This having been accomplished the horse is bled by drawing off a quantity

of blood from the jugular vein into a sterilized tube without exposure to air, this operation being conducted with the greatest care to avoid infection. As a rule the horses are not bled oftener than once a month.

While the health of the horse at the very outset must be of the best, its well being is not neglected during the period of immunization and drawing of its blood rich in antitoxin. In addition to a sanitary stable it requires daily exercise for the maintenance of its health. For this large paddocks are provided.

The blood having been drawn, the work of the chemist begins. It is first placed in cold storage to allow the clot to form after the subsidence of which the serum is drawn off. Though supposed to be sterile, the serum is twice filtered in a sterile atmosphere to make positive the removal of any germs. The next step is the standardization of the preparation thus obtained.

The strength of the antitoxin is expressed in units. A unit is the amount of antitoxin necessary to save the life of a guinea pig which has received 100 minimal fatal doses of toxin.

ner.

The minimal fatal dose is first ascertained in the following manA series of healthy guinea pigs of standard weight (250 grams) is injected with a small amount of the toxin, beginning with an amount probably not fatal and giving each successive animal a slightly increased amount. Within several days some of the guinea pigs die, others recover. The smallest quantity of toxin that proved fatal is taken as the minimal dose. This may, therefore, be defined as the smallest amount of a given toxin that is necessary to kill a guinea pig of standard weight.

The number of units of strength of the antitoxin are then ascertained in the following manner. To five healthy guinea pigs 100 minimal fatal doses of toxin are administered and to four of these varying amounts of antitoxin in addition. As a rule, the guinea pig which has received no antitoxin, dies within three days. The remainder live or die according to whether or not they have received sufficient antitoxin to counteract the toxin. If the smallest amount of antitoxin that saved a guinea pig happened to be 500 cc., then 1 cc. of this particular preparation would contain 500 such units, for it would contain five hundred times the amount of antitoxin requisite to counteract 100 minimal fatal doses.

The diphtheria toxin used in these experiments is usually prepared by growing a pure culture of diphtheria germs in bouillon for about a week, after which time all germs are removed from the liquid.

The antitoxin prepared and standardized as described above, is now ready for use. So powerful and so unstable a remedy, however, requires special care in its further manipulation. It is not kept in ordinary vials, but filled, in dust-proof rooms, into syringe-containers, so that the contents may be discharged into the patient.

So much depends upon the painstaking care with which all of these operations are performed that the United States government has assumed control over the establishments in which diphtheria antitoxin is manufactured. The laboratory described and illustrated in this account is operated under license No. 9.

An account of a fiftieth anniversary of a pharmaceutical manufacturing establishment, no matter how detailed and extensive, would

be sadly deficient if it concerned itself with things only. The man who laid the foundation and laid it so well, as in this particular case, should not be passed by with mere mention.

Frederick Stearns was born in 1832. As a lad of fourteen he was apprenticed to a druggist in Buffalo. During his apprenticeship he attended lecture courses on chemistry and pharmacy in the University of Buffalo. Later he entered the employ of A. D. Matthews,

one of the leading retail druggists of Buffalo at that time and it was here that he became acquainted with the details and management of a large, well-ordered and successful pharmacy. Two years later he was taken into partnership. In 1854, however, he sold out and came to Detroit on New Year's day, 1855.

His early attempts to súpplement the duties of a retail druggist with the ambitions of the future manufacturer for thousands of others, have already been described. His activities, however, were not restricted merely to his business. He was an active member of the American Pharmaceutical Association, also editor and publisher of a medical journal, the "Peninsular and Independent." In 1879, several years after he had begun the manufacture of non-secret nonproprietary preparations, he started "The New Idea," in which he made known his business policy.

In 1887, at the age of fifty-five, he announced his intention to withdraw from active business. In commenting upon the sensational reports that have appeared in the press about Dr. Osler's remarks concerning the man of sixty, "Life" remarks that it is after all not so much a question of being retired at this age but of being fit, of being ready to retire. It is indeed a rare priviledge to be both fit and able to retire at sixty and to settle down to a life of useful leisure.

Though not a college man, Mr. Stearns apparently has made the most of his educational opportunities. His travels abroad resulted not only in an improvement of his health, but in the collection of thousands of objects of great educational value. A collection of some 16,000 objects of Japanese and Korean art were donated to the Detroit Museum of Art; a collection of over 10,000 specimens of shells have found a home in the Detroit Museum; a collection of over 2000 musical instruments illustrating their evolution from the most primitive forms to the most complex modern products, has been donated to the University of Michigan.

Nor has Mr. Stearns been content with the mere bringing together of these numerous objects. With the cooperation of scientific experts the collections have not only been properly classified but catalogued and described.

This is leisure well spent indeed and American pharmacy may yet hope that Mr. Stearns will remember his first love after having demonstrated his catholicity of thought and munificence in so many other directions.