SEP 1 8 1976

The University of Western Ontario, London, Canada

 

Health Sciences Centre
Department of Bacteriology

and Immunology September 11, 1975.

Professor Joshua Lederberg,
Department of Genetics,

Stanford University Medical Center,
Stanford, California. 94305

Dear Josh:
Your welcome letter probably arrived here a day or so after I

took off for a two weeks vacation in and around Vancouver from which
I only returned a few days ago.

>f

VIRUSES.

I cannot now trace Haagen's work, it appeared in a journal which
is not in our library. In any case an observation which was much more
important than either Haagen's or Bland and Robinow's had been published
as early as 1936 by Schlesinger in Nature, 138, pp 508/509. He reported
the strongly positive Feulgen’ of a concentrated, purified sample of a
bacteriophage! react iew

After our note had appeared, C. H. Andrews wrote to us and pointed
out that we had overlooked Schlesinger's work. That man unfortunately
committed suicide soon after, had he not done so he would probably
have become a Delbrueck-Luria like star in virus biology.

I have now looked up Cowdry and note his negative results. Bland's
and my work on vaccinia was published in detail in the J. Path. Bact.
48, 381, (1939). You will find there a photomicrograph of the positive
Feulgen reaction of early vaccinia inclusions. It is amusing to reflect
that point 3 of our discussion - alas, rejected by us - at least allows
for the possibility of an eclipse phase some time before such a stage
was clearly established for viruses. Worse is our blindness to the
possible general significance of the disruption of layers of contiguous
cells by multiplying virus. This effect, destined to become famous, is
clearly illustrated with a low power photograph in the 1935 paper by
Nauck and myself which is quoted among our references. Unfortunately I
was intent on studying viruses which produce visible inclusions. That
the break-up of sheets of cells might be a useful indicator of the
multiplication of viruses in general never entered my head.
BACTERTA.

(a). Griffith. I think you will find the background story you
are looking for in Alan Downie's Griffith Memorial Lecture (bottom
of page 2, top of 3) in the J. gen. Microbiol. 73 of 1972.

(b) The first compelling evidence of discrete Feulgen positive
specks of regular distribution wasproduced simultaneously by Stille
(B. subtilis) and Piekarski (Salmonella) in the Archiv fuer Mikrobiol.
of 1937. Piekarski was the first ta use Giemsa after HCl hydrolysis,
originally merely to reinforce the weak Feulgen image. This was the
technique which allowed me to obtain those bacterial photographs of
the mid-forties; a fact which, I trust, I have never failed to acknowledge.

I believe this is all I can tell you. What you have to say about
TMV revives my scandalised amazement that Bawden and Pirie were not
included in Stanley's Nobel award.

Best wishes.

Yours sincerely,

LC. Ros Mow

CR:ph C. Robinow
encls.

PS. Mow thanks for Mtenh Hprnb