ROSE DEFENSE EXHIBIT 27
EXTRACTS FROM REPORT OF PROFESSOR DR. E. GILDEMEISTER CONCERNING THE ACTIVITIES OF THE ROBERT KOCH INSTITUTE—REICH INSTITUTE FOR THE FIGHT AGAINST INFECTIOUS DISEASES
2. Malaria Research.
a. Cultures of strains. The strain “Greece” of plasmodium vivax was bred in the department by Miss Lange till 31 December 1942, in the 30th continuous passage of man-mosquito-man. The number of infected patients up to that date was 379. The main work concerned the malaria treatment of paralytics and schizophrenics. In addition, however, there were a few therapeutic experiments with other diseases, in cases where the clinics concerned required mosquito bite infections in order to obtain a reliable malaria free from lues. The number of clinics and hospitals obtaining part or all their requirements of therapeutical malaria infection from the department rose to 11. In addition to the strain “Greece”, various other malaria strains were taken into the mosquito passage for comparative experiments; they were, however, not permanently maintained. This considerable amount of incoming clinical material was continuously collected and sorted although it has not yet been used.
In the course of the research two more laboratory infections occurred due to mosquito bites.
The following examinations by Dr. Hoering, Professor Rose, and Dr. Emmel were made possible by the maintenance of the anopheles colony and the malaria breed.
b. Parasite straining. Dr. Hoering continued her work on the improvement of the microscopic presentation of malaria parasites. Despite certain improvements of the microscopic picture it was not possible to develop a procedure easily applicable in practice and superior to the established methods.
c. Artificial feeding and artificial infection of anopheles. Dr. Hoering continued to develop the methods of artificial blood feeding of anopheles, evolved by Dr. Olzscha. In this artificial feeding the anopheles would not take citrated blood even though sugar had been added. Blood haemolized with water and saturated with sugar was taken, as well as liquid blood, although the addition of sugar was preferred. Artificial feeding of blood is biologically not altogether equal to natural feeding. The duration of life was almost the same with artificial feeding as with the normal feeding of the animal. However, females which were merely artificially fed, only laid eggs in exceptional cases.
It is known that with anopheles which suck blood from the animal, the blood enters the duodenum without previously entering the sucking stomach, while other nutritious matter first reaches the sucking and reserve stomachs. It was previously assumed that the nature of the food, especially the number of cells, acted as indicative irritation. Dr. Hoering’s experiments with artificial blood nutrition showed this assumption to be wrong. Sweetened as well as unsweetened blood, which is used for artificial feeding, first enters into the reserve stomachs in the same way as a sugar solution. Further experiments proved that the piercing of a membrane also causes no indicative irritation.