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To the Editor:—The article on blood cultures after tonsillectomy by Rubin, Epstein and Werner in your October issue was of considerable interest to us, as the work was similar to experiments which we performed in 1925. Our blood cultures were taken only on patients who had recently had rheumatic fever, with the idea of determining what organism, if any, was forced into the blood stream of such persons following traumatism of one of the apparent foci of infection. We thought that by this means we might possibly obtain the virus of rheumatic fever. It was natural to assume that the virus of rheumatic fever was forced into the blood stream after tonsillectomy; the "lighting up" of an old infection, or, better still, the occurrence of crops of rheumatic nodules immediately following the operation in such cases tended to substantiate this point of view. Moreover, the work of Schottmuller, who