Hint from the Henhouse

During the wartime food shortage, researchers noticed a curious thing about the health of chickens. Well-housed chickens, deprived of animal-protein foods, began to droop and look sickly. Chickens living in dirty, littered henhouses did all right, even on a poor diet; but when the henhouse litter was cleaned up, they began to droop too. This was especially interesting to six Lederle Laboratories researchers who guessed that something in the chicken litter was supplying some mysterious factor the chickens needed.

What was it? The researchers isolated one microorganism after another; they cultured each and tried it out. Last week they reported in the Journal of Laboratory and Clinical Medicine that they had found a chicken dung culture which produced the same effect as liver extract in patients with pernicious anemia.

Samples of what they called "animal protein factor" have been tried out on patients at Western Reserve University's hospital in Cleveland. Two aged women, extremely ill with pernicious anemia,' responded as well as patients respond to liver extract. The discovery is important. For the first time, a laboratory has produced from commonly occurring bacteria a substance with anemia-treating properties, and pernicious anemia patients are freed from the ups & downs of the meat market. Liver extract, obtained from cow livers, varies in quality. The new product will eventually be mass-produced and comparatively cheap. The animal protein factor has proved that it clears up the blood damage in pernicious anemia. Still to be answered: does it repair the nerve damage that is frequently part of the disease?

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.