STATENS SERUMINSTITUT

Copenhagen S. Denmark.

STATE ‘ont Telephone No.: Central 2835 (Open day & night).

Director: J. Orskov, .D. Telegraphic Address: Statsserum, Copenhagen.

scares te

Giro Account No.: 2817.
January 29, 1958

Dear Esther and Josh,

You ask us to let you hear from us often and disregard that you may be sometimes
poor correspondents. Till now it has been the other way round. Now we ask you
to disregard that you have not heard a word from us since our departure from
Madison. From now on we hope life will be more normal, so that letters will

pass from here west more often.

Thank you very much for your letters and for the check amounted $ 89,36. We

were a little amazed at all the gallons of milk we had consumed according to the
milkbill. After having received this and after having checked our checking-
account from Madison we realized that the Bowman Dairy Company must be wrong.
Could we bother you once more with this matter? We are awefully sorry to do so
but we are sure you agree in it being best to have it cleared up. We therefore
return to you the milkbill from which it appears that the previous balance was

§ 7,370 A check dated Nov. 10 on this very amount has been cashed by the Dairx
Comp. We send you this check. Probably the mistake is due to our change in
addres from Prospect Place to Huginia Ave.

In a way it was a queer feeling going back to our own old desks. We certainly
enjoy many things here, but we are missing many other things from the lab in
Madison. Little by little we will have gadgets from there introduced here. Just
now we are having cut holes in our desks and other things will follow. In two
or three months we will get get rid of our routine work in the sensitivity de-
partment, this will save us a lot of time. We still have the Escherichia Center

and for some length of time there will be enough to do here.

So far we have hardly had time to think about any genetical work except making
spottests to see if our W 1611 Hfr was still Hfr., it came out that it was. In
connection with this we have to tell you that the most peculiar thing happened
to us 4 days after our arrival in Copenhagen. Half of all the strains we brought
with us from Madison were stolen from our locked car, and were never found. The

pane in on of the small frontwindows was broken, one box with dried cultures
was removed and a handful of cultures from two other boxes was removed too. It

has been to tempting for the thief to see those boxes lying in a car registered

in U.S. I think he afterwards has been badly disappointed, or maybe he did want

them for some genetical experiments. Would you please help us in this bad situation?
We are enclosing a list of all the stolen cultures, and we do hope that maybe

Ann one day could get time to mail these cultures to us. You asked us before we

left to make out a list of the old Wisconsin cultures of which we took with us

a copy. This list we also include now.

One of the very first days we will repeat our crosses with our Hfr strain hoping
that we are able to confirm the correlation between the 0 antigen and the histi-
dine locus. Further we have just started checking the fertility of the 0 and H
teststrains in SRP crosses with our Hfr strain. But we are really looking forward
to the time coming, when our routine work will decrease enabling us to work harder

in the genetic field

About our trip back we can tell you that we were very well received by Danish
friends in Tarrytown north of New York. We stayed with them a couple of days

moved then for some days to a hotel in the middle of the city and then further

to another family and once again to a third family, then back to the hotel and

at last to the boat. Everybody tried to make the last days of our year in U.S.
unforgettable and we had a wonderful time. In N. Y. we were of course extremely
busy, but we left a lot of things to be seen and visited the next time we go there
whenever that will be. We think that N.Y. is a very fascinating town but yet we
were very happy that your lab was not situated im there in stead of in Madison,
that would have life much more complicated. Besides we enjoyed tremendously to

be in moch closer contact with the countryside than we arg in Copenhagen where

we have resided all our life.

The crossage with "Stockholm" which lasted 11 days was at least lo days too long,
but it was very quiet and the Atlantic was as smooth as lake Mendota. The reception
in Copenhagen was beyond description, everyone of our family was on the peer and al]
our friends were there too, the custom officers were in the right Christmas spirit
and when we at last were released we went to our home which was beautifully de-
corated with flowers.

But since then so many things have happened, and so many things have had to be arrar
ged that it has been a little difficult to start normal work before the last few
days. The theft we have told you about. The day after that something extraordinary
happened to Pernille. She went to bed completely healthy and was accidentally five
minutes later found unconscious, cyanotic and with conwulsions. After a few seconds

we ordered an ambulance which took us to the nearest hospital. They immediately

made preparations for tracheotomh and told us that if this was not done she would
2.

be dead in five minutes. But suddenly just before the operation she screamed and
after that she came back to life in a few seconds, and the operation was not needed.
“this hour was the worst we have ever experienced. Our only explanationsgx is that

she who had eaten very much during the day had got a vomiting (a tiny one) and had
in the very deep sleep inspired a little bit of food into larynx. But even if she
since then has been completely OK we are still a little nervous every evening and
we often go to her room to see if she is all right. In fact we could go on telling
you about more ar less bad events, but we will not. For the moment everything is
placid.

We are really looking very much forward to seeing you this summer in Stockholm

and even more to seeing you installed in our apartment, afterwards. We will do

our best to give you a pleasant time here.

With the very best wishes

‘

oS
/ iS . mee tO
Tt & Whe ROR 2

P.S. The three reprints by Freundt were for you.
8
We should like very much to have a reprint Josh’s paper in Bact. R ev.

which appeared just before we left.

id

Sam gts {> SY bw the a dy ; Be _ sy ada
“A : *

-

Xa etal, ab Caw Wr .