Mamie C. Janzen, laboratory technician, injects rows of eggs with a syringe.

Bio/Historical Note from news clipping:: “Part of the technique of producing vaccine for encephalomyelitis or “sleeping sickness” in horses is shown here. Dr. Althea N. Burton (second from left), veterinary surgeon at the university’s animal diseases laboratory (see A-3642), is transferring a deadly virus obtained from the brain of a dead guinea pig to that of a live one. The animal’s skull has been anaesthetized and it feels no pain, and will die within four days. Laboratory technicians like I. Wynn (at Dr. Burton’s left) and H. Rublee (right), will remove the brain and place it in a glycerine preservative, keeping it there for a maximum of two weeks. The brain is then ground up and placed in a solution which is injected into an 11-day chicken embryo. Mamie C. Janzen, is shown in this operation at far right. The egg shell is sealed with wax and incubated a further 24 hours, the length of time for the virus to kill the embryo. Removed from the shell and ground up in a “colloid mill”, formalin is added to the embryo to kill the virus. The vaccine is then filtered, diluted in saline solution, and stored for two weeks to ensure the death of the entire virus. In this form it is bottled and shipped to prairie druggist[s] from whom farmers buy it and inoculate their horses at a total cost of $1 per horse.” From Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, Apr. 1948.

Bio/Historical Note: Mamie Clara Janzen was born in 1904 in Rosthern, Saskatchewan. She took her schooling in Rosthern and moved to Saskatoon with her family in 1924. Janzen joined the staff of the Virus Laboratory in 1939 as a laboratory technician. She was part of the team that developed the cure for equine encephalomyelitis, more commonly known as "sleeping sickness." Janzen retired in 1966 due to severe asthma. She died in 1999 in Saskatoon at age 94.