CURE FOR PNEUMONIA DISCOVERED BY FELTON

Discovery of a new treatment for pneumonia which holds out a definite hope of radically reducing the death rate has been made by Dr. Lloyd D. Felton. Assistant Professor of Preventive Medicine and Hygiene in the Harvard Medical School, according to an announcement made yesterday by the Influenza Commission of the Metropolitan Life Insurance.

Dr. Felton has found a method of precipitating and concentrating the antibodies in anti-pneumococcus serum. This concentrated solution has been used with encouraging results in about 60 cases at the Boston City Hospital and in about 60 more in hospitals in New York and Brooklyn. While it is impossible to estimate the exact value of the discovery, even the most skeptical of those familiar with Dr. Felton's work have declared that at least 35 percent, and possibly 50 percent reduction in the pneumonia mortality rate is assured.

The discovery of Dr. Felton's is in many ways a parallel to the concentration and refinement of diphtheria antitoxin. It is predicted that the great strides made in the prevention and cure of diphtheria will be duplicated to a considerable extent in the next decade in the fight on pneumonia, and this latest discovery is the first big progressive step in that direction. Although research by members of the influenza Commission has been going on for five years, Dr. Felton's discovery is the only one that has been made.

Dr. Felton came to the University in September, 1922, where he has been steadily at work on the mechanism of virulence. He is a graduate of Wooster College, Ohio, in the class of 1910, and of the Johns Hopkins Medical School in 1916.

Dr. Felton will read a paper this morning before the New England Health Institute in New York City, when he will make public the methods and essential facts of his investigation.