In this letter, the biochemist and immunologist Percival Hartley described his reaction and the reaction of colleagues to the publication of Oswald Avery's seminal 1944 article proposing that genes are made of DNA. He also discussed his efforts to keep the National Institute of Medical Research in operation during the bombing of London by the Germans in 1941 (Hartley spent his nights in the barricaded ground floor of the Institute with its director, Sir Henry Dale), his role in producing tetanus and gas gangrene antitoxins for the treatment of injured soldiers, the turn of the war against the Germans, and the state of public health in Britain during the war.
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