"There were only the usual changes in the ovaries associated with pregnancy. Mind you," he went on, "even with the new techniques, frozen sections are far from perfect, but I must admit I'd be disappointed if I weren't so relieved." "Did the male ferrets show anything?" I said. "He wasn't sure. He thought there were some inflammatory changes in the testicles but he wanted to wait for the paraffin sections to confirm it." "Was there anything else?" Pat asked. "Nothing except bronchial irritation, which one would expect." It was eight o'clock when the telephone rang and I picked it up. "Dr. Macdonald here," I said. "Mac, is the boss in?" Smith asked. "He's busy right now. Can I take a message?" "Yes. Tell him the H and E's on those ferrets show only mild ovarian inflammation. The testicles are definitely inflamed ... a low grade thing with a lot of lymphocytes. There is swelling and some degeneration of the sperm cells but it doesn't seem to affect the hormone secreting elements." "What about other organs?" "Aside from nasal and bronchial inflammation, essentially negative." "Have you any suggestions?" "It's too early to come to any conclusions but I'd like to follow up on this. How about taking biopsies on the male ferrets rather than sacrificing them. Then maybe we can see what is happening, I mean what the progression of the disease is, in the same animal. You could snip out a piece of ovary on some females too!" "It isn't easy but we can do it." "How about the other animals?" "Some of the mice look a bit sick this morning, but the monkeys are still healthy." "Well, if you can get the biopsies to us soon, we should have a good idea, late tonight or tomorrow morning, of what's going on. Say, I just had a thought! Didn't George inoculate some ferrets when the epidemic first broke out?" "I wasn't here but I believe he did. Why don't you ask Harry? He was working with the Chief when I was away. All those animals are in the other section anyway." "I'll do that. With yours in the acute stage and the others convalescent, we should get a good idea of the progress of the disease. I'll let you know later." Hallam was in the ferret room. I joined him there and told him of Smith's suggestions. "This is going to be quite a day," he grinned wryly. * * * * * He was so right. It took several hours, and innumerable bites and scratches from indignant animals, fortunately the plastic gloves were tough enough not to tear, before the last snarling male writhed back into his cage to lick his smarting personal property. We stopped for lunch and went back to the more complicated task of operating on the females in the afternoon.