Dochez and Avery discovered that culture fluids of pneumococci which were filtered to remove bacteria contained a substance in solution that precipitated when added to certain antisera, and which proved to be type specific. They reasoned that this component, which they called the "specific soluble substance," or SSS, was released in the body from the masses of pneumococci in the lungs of pneumonia patients and then excreted from the kidney and therefore present in patients' urine. Thus, it was possible to diagnose the type of pneumonia with which a person was infected by means of a simple urine test.
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