The blood serum test for the disease already was in use in Europe and here when J.B. Fitch came to the University of Minnesota in 1917 to head vetrinary medicine. Fitch suspected the accuracy of the brucellosis diagnostic test when, by chance, he sent his samples to another lab and the results differed greatly from his own. In 1924 Fitch sent identical samples to five laboratories and found that only 29 percent of the tests agreed. He found the antigen concentration used in the tests was 20 times as great in some labs as in others.