Letters Sent to Dr. Herman Schlundt, April 17, 1929

April 17th,1929. Dr. Herman Schlundt, University of Missouri, Columbia, Mol Dear Dr. Schlundt: The following is copy of a telegram we sent you this afternoon: *HAVE YOU TESTED EXCRETA FOR THORON" I don't doubt but what you have given consideration to this phase of the problem, but it was° the only outstanding point in your letter of the 15th, which was not covered. I am equally as surprised as you are at the nature of this result, and am not fully convinced that the alpha rey activity observ- ed may be ascribed to polonium and RaD, although if there is no radium or mesothorium present I guess we would have to assume that the activity was due to polonium and RaD. You will recall from my letter of November 14,1928, giving you the experimental data on the excreta in the Dunn case, that we observed a net discharge as high as 0.11 div/sec, for specimens of 1/4 and 1/2 gram. The activity of the Fryer caseis approximately 1/10 of that of the Dunn girl, and it would seem that there should be no difficulty in detecting the rad um in her excreta if it was there in proportion to the Dunn case. All of our detersinations were made by the bg--sulphate fusion method, and it is our custom to add a small amount of barium chloride to all determinations where we are not assured that the radium present is amply protected by barlum. This procedure, I believe, should be followed out in all radium determinations. I don't believe there would be any possibility of the radium depositing upon the walls of the flasks, thereby becoming non-emanating. I trust that you have sufficient samples to conduct further experiments to determine if there is any mesothorium present in the excreta, as well as making radium determinations by the bt-sulphate fusion method. I hope to see Dr. Flinn in the next few days and will tell him of the progress you are making in this work. The electroscopes in Dr. Flinn's possession have not been calibrated as yet, but we hope to do this the fore part of next week. Albrecht has been very busy on some other matters for the past or ten days, and I have not felt that we could spare him to do this work. We are advised that the Wylf-Hess electrometer has arrived from Germany, and will be delivered to us in the course of the next few days. Sincerely yours, Vice President.