This report, prepared by Dr. F. M. Burnet, was issued by the Medical Research Council on the recommendation of its bacteriologic committee. It deals with a method that has been found useful in the study of human and animal diseases due to infection with filter-passing viruses and other infectious agents, including rickettsia and bacteria (Goodpasture, E. W., and Anderson, Katherine: The Problem of Infection as Presented by Bacterial Invasion of the Chorio-Allantoic Membrane of Chick Embryos, Am. J. Path.13:149 [March] 1937).
Because no filtrable virus has as yet been cultivated in a dead medium, methods for studying them must offer viable susceptible cells or a living host. Woodruff and Goodpasture in 1931 and Goodpasture, Woodruff and Buddingh in 1932 successfully infected the chorio-allantoic membrane of chick embryos with the viruses of fowlpox, vaccinia and herpes simplex and demonstrated that this living tissue provides a sterile medium in which