Cultivation Studies on Wart Suspensions of Verruca

The recent report by Bivins (1) on the successful cultivation of the wart agent on the chorioallantoic membrane (CAM) of embryonated hen's eggs and the report by Strauss, Bunting and Melnick (2) on the electron microscopy of elementary virus bodies in wart tissue prompted the undertaking of similar and extended experiments in this laboratory. Felsher (3) had ground up 3 warts in saline and had inoculated the material on the chorioallantoic membrane of ten 7 to 14 day-old chick embryos. He observed no growth and concluded that the developing chick embryo was not a suitable medium for culturing verruca vulgaris. Bivins (1) ground up the single primary wart of a series of 17 warts which had developed on his right hand during a period of about 2 years and observed the appearance of raised whitish "pearl" growths on the CAM of 10-day old embryos inoculated with this suspension. The Berkefeld "V" filtrate of a second passage membrane caused similar lesions as the unifitered material. Bivins surmised, therefore, that he had cultured a viral agent from verruca vulgaris.