GONOlilUIOEA. Four smears were submitted to each laboratory, being prepared through the kindness 0Í Dr. 11 ¡ilion of the Boston Dispensary from foui' patients, two with positive and two with negative discharges. GONORRHOEA TESTS. Lab. 12 3 4 1 + + 2 + + 8 + + 4 + + 5 + . + «i + + + 7 -. -+ + S --+ + !) + + U) + + 11 V + + 12 + + One of the negative smears was reported positive by one laboratory and suspicious by another. One great difficulty in gonorrhoea diagnosis is with the proper control of

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... the gram slain. Unless considerable care is used one may decolorize loo much, causing gram-positive organisms to appear as grani-negative ; or one may decolorize too little, causing grain-negative organisms to appear as gram-positive. Since one laboratory reported this difficulty overcome .by use of Burke's staining met hod. the formula for Ibis method will, at the rennest of the other laboratories, be included in I he report on technique. Of these four examinations diphtheria is undoubtedly the most difficult, and the results in the other three series (tuberculosis, typhoid fever and gonorrhoea) are fairly uniform. With diphtheria, however, the discrepancies are very noticeable, and this in spite of the fact that the various workers knew their results were to be compared with those obtained by others. Since all the diphtheria cultures, with the exception of sets for two laboratories*, wen; planted on tubes from I he same batch of media, and all were delivered to the laboratories within a few hours, it would seem that the cultures should he Uniform, yet in one case reported positive by the writer a smear from a duplicate culture was brought to him which showed no diphtheria bacilli. Probably cultures for diagnosis would have given better results, since the bacilli arc apt to be more numerous and of better morphology. One cannot but feel, however, that diphtheria bacilli have been overlooked in some of these cultures and that sonic of the technicians need toning up on this examination. Possibly a frequent comparison of duplicate cultures with other laboratories, or occasional "One of those laboratories preferred to reinocúlate from the cultures submitted in Us own media; the other runde its own cultures fr.»in the swnbs. revision of diphtheria slides, staining methods and diagnoses by an expert diagnostician, would be of advantage in establishing a higher precision in diphtheria examinations.