The possibility of a vaccine for gonorrhea is nevertheless being explored especially recently, as the statistics have been mounting alarmingly. The same kind of work that is being done primarily in the hope of developing a blood test for gonorrhea also has, as a by product, the aim of producing an immunizing agent. The gonococcus can be grown in culture, and in recent years studies by the VD research group at Atlanta have been successful in maintaining a culture that is fully virulent. Another important recent advance made by the same workers has been to produce experimental gonorrhea in chimpanzees, where heretofore no experimental animal was available other than man himself: It will now be possible to test experimental vaccines in chimpanzees before trying them in human volunteers.

A ray of hope for an eventual gonorrhea vaccine slants in from an unexpected source. The bacterium of cerebrospinal meningitis the "meningococcus" is a close relative of the gonococcus, although the two diseases are very different. Both are problems among the military, but meningitis is a "nice," respectable, but terribly fatal, epidemic disease. More significant is the fact that the meningococcus tends to live harmlessly in the throat, and only occasionally breaks through into the blood, and after that to the lining tissues of the brain called meninges. So there may be a natural immunity against it resulting from its sojourn in the throat; and a vaccine leading to antibodies in the blood might prevent it from passing from throat to meninges. Such a vaccine (for one of three existing types of meningococci) has recently been developed by a group at the Walter Reed Army Institute in Washington. The meningococcus still has no experimental animal except man, as was true until recently for the gonococcus, so that the tests of the Walter Reed vaccine could be conducted only on human subjects. Extensive preliminary tests on volunteers have been encouraging. Hope is held out for a triple vaccine (for all three types) in a few years. Some of the hope is reflected onto the gonococcus.