"Dr. Hallam. Smith calling."
The sound came into the living room as we sat at midnight coffee. The rasping voice jarred us out of the apathy of exhaustion.
"This is Hallam."
"George, we've just read those testicular biopsies. There's a sub-acute inflammation in those with the flu, as we saw before; in the convalescent ferrets there is complete absence of spermatozoa with no evidence of new formation."
I looked at Pat. "Now who should be worried?"
"I've never heard of this before in ferrets with the flu," Hallam was saying. "I'd think of mumps except that it isn't easily transmitted to the weasel tribe and this isn't like mumps clinically."
"What do you propose to do now?"
Hallam thought for a moment. "Carry on with our animal experiments; but we can't afford to wait for the monkeys. We shall have to start working on people."
"How?"
"Get in touch with the Public Health Department and see if you can round up volunteers for testicular biopsy in convalescents from the first attack. If they don't want a biopsy maybe you can persuade them to give us a sperm count."