Pneumonia

The furthest reaches of medicine could not keep pneumonia two years ago from striking at the wife of Lucius Nathan Littauer, wealthy glove manufacturer of Gloversville, N. Y. (onetime, 1897-1907, Republican congressman from New York), from filling her lungs until gasping, coma-stricken, she died. Mr. Littauer, like many another grief-stricken man,* resolved to aid medical science in uncovering knowledge that might have prevented her death. So last week he gave $5,000 to New York University for the study and cure of pneumonia, and promised to give another like amount every six months.

The pneumonia fund will be administered without constraint by Dr. William Hallock Park, professor since 1897 in New York University and director since 1894 of the New York Health Department Bureau of Laboratories. During the War A.E.F. medical officers esteemed highly the efficacious serums of this bureau and traveled miles to get them from supply depots. Dr. Park has characterized pneumonia as "probably about the worst disease we have left to conquer, aside from those which attack adults of comparatively advanced age. Pneumonia now kills more persons every year than tuberculosis. [The last thorough data (1923) gives the U. S. pneumonia death rate as 109 per 100,000 of population.] Human beings are liable to it at practically every age and in practically every climate."

Pneumonia is a disease of the lungs caused chiefly by the Diplococcus lanceolatus (twin, spherical, yet slightly elongated germ), which occurs widely in nature and is a common inhabitant of the mouth. It may also cause bronchopneumonia, meningitis, endocarditis, and septicemia. It gives out a very strong toxin, which the kidneys eliminate wth frequent damage to themselves. The germ induces in the lungs, in lobar pneumonia especially, a copious exudation of protective serum. Then come the polymorphonuclear (of many-shaped nuclei) leucocytes, which surround the invading germs and eat them (phagocytosis).

The Bacillus mucosus capsulatus, or Friedlander's bacillus, onetime was considered the important cause of lobar pneumonia. But from the pathological point of view it is less important than the other. Sometimes the Bacillus typhosus causes the disease.

Lobular pneumonia may be contracted through the air passages or by invasion through the blood system of many different kinds of germ?Micrococcus lanceolatus, Streptococcus pyogenes, Staphylococcus aureus, the tubercle bacillus, occasionally even the glanders bacillus, actinomyces (rayed fungoid), oidiomyces (egg-shaped fungoid).

Chiefly on account of the many germs that may cause lung infections (pneumonia) the devising of an efficacious serum is very difficult. Too many of the micro-organisms are vastly elusive. But Dr. Park has made considerable progress, hopes for more.

*Recently the wife of Stephen Butler Leacock, Canadian political economist and wit, died of cancer. Now he is devoting his wealth and writing ability to research and prevention of that disease (see TIME Feb. 1).