IMPROVEMENTS IN THE TECHNIC OF AGGLUTINATION.

Undoubtedly one of the most potent reasons that certain laboratory methods of great advantage to the physician do not more rapidly find their way into actual practice is the complicated character of some of the manipulations. Every step towards the simplification of such methods is welcome. Take the agglutination reaction in typhoid fever, for instance. Its great diagnostic value is universally acknowledged; it is not a very difficult reaction to carry out; but it requires a fresh, pure culture of typhoid bacilli, and many practitioners no doubt find it burdensome to endeavor to keep such cultures on hand. Of course, cultures are always obtainable from laboratories, but then there is the transplantation from day to day and the maintenance of an incubator at constant temperature. Unless the physician has had real laboratory training and is interested in keeping up a clinical laboratory of his own—and it seems that this is