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In a fourteen month period from December 1943 to February 1945 an investigation was sponsored by the Committee on Medical Research and the Venereal Disease Subcommittee of the National Research Council, supported by a grant from the Office of Scientific Research and Development, into the problem of the nonspecific positive (so-called "biologic false positive") reaction for syphilis. The bloods of Red Cross donors at the Philadelphia Blood Donor Center supplied the material, and the Institute for the Control of Syphilis at the University of Pennsylvania and the Graduate Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania conducted the case investigations. In all, 210,261 blood specimens were tested in a nine months period, and 79 of the donors showing definite positives ("unsatisfactory bloods") were subjected to subsequent critical clinical and laboratory examination. The studied series was enlarged to 98 cases by additional persons from private practice in whom possible nonspecific positive reactions for