Madness, Measles, Metabolism

The University of Pennsylvania has the oldest medical school in the U. S., founded in 1765. The University also established the country's first university hospital, started the first clinical laboratory, published the first treatise on mental disease. It was therefore fitting that at U. of Pa.'s sober bicentennial celebration last week modern medical progress should get much attention. Noteworthy medical reports:

Operation on the Mind. Schizophrenia, the kind of insanity characterized by withdrawal into a dream world, is the most widespread mental disease in the U. S. In recent years convulsions induced by insulin, metrazol, azoman and electric shock have improved many schizophrenics. Last week Dr. Edward Adam ("Streck") Strecker, a U. of Pa. psychiatric bigwig, described a new brain operation for schizophrenia. It is called pre-frontal leucotomy, involves drilling a small hole in the temple, inserting a narrow, flat-bladed instrument with which a fan-shaped cut is made in the brain lobes.

This operation, first devised in Spain, was performed on eight schizophrenics by Dr. Francis Clark Grant, U. of Pa. professor of neurosurgery. The results, declared Dr. Strecker, were "interesting and sometimes truly amazing." Homicidal aggressions and panics due to hallucinations disappeared. The hallucinations persisted, but it became easier to recall the patient to reality. One of the cases was a young woman who had been so violent she had to be fed with a stomach tube. She insisted on going naked, flew into frequent rages. A week after her operation she was willing to wear clothes, play bridge, could take walks, talk intelligently. Now, said Dr. Strecker, she spends much time sculpturing.

New Vaccine. Like smallpox, influenza, infantile paralysis, etc., measles is a virus disease. It is caused by some organism too small to be seen microscopically. Commonly considered a trifling ailment of childhood, it often brings on ear infections, mastoiditis, bronchopneumonia. Measles can be a serious problem in wartime, for isolated country boys often grow to maturity without getting measles or acquiring natural immunity, and catch it when herded into army camps. Among the U. S. forces in World War I, pneumonia following measles was a common cause of death.

Last week a successful measles vaccine was announced by Drs. Joseph Stokes Jr. of U. of Pa.'s medical school and Geoffrey William Rake of the Squibb Institute for Medical Research. They obtain active virus from the blood or throat washings of measly moppets, treat this material with ether or by filtering to remove bacteria, pass it into chicken eggshells through a small hole made with a dentist's drill, inject it into the chick embryo's outer membrane. After allowing four or five days for the virus to propagate, they open the eggs, remove the membrane, grind it, mix it with broth, centrifuge it (a centrifuge is a high-speed whirling machine which acts like a cream separator). The vaccine is then ready to use.

Tests were made on two groups of children, one vaccinated, the other not. Later both groups were inoculated with active virus. The unvaccinated children came down with measles, all the vaccinated ones stayed well. The parents were willing to let their children serve as guinea pigs because: 1) almost all children have measles at some time or other (98% are susceptible); 2) the tests were made in the late spring under hawk-eyed supervision, with the assurance that the malady would be mild, the complications nil.

Vitamin for Cancer? No one knows the cause of cancer or how to prevent it. But cancer's thousands of hard-working researchers are making progress. In Philadelphia last week doctors and biochemists were much impressed by a chain of astute guesses put together by Harvard's Louis Frederick Fieser, one of the men who last year synthesized the bloodclotting, hemorrhage-stopping Vitamin K.

It is known that certain hydrocarbon compounds from coal tar, notably the cholanthrenes, cause cancers to grow in animals. These hydrocarbons are called carcinogens ("cancer-makers"). Methyl-cholanthrene is the most potent carcinogen known. Six years ago two British chemists found that methylcholanthrene could be made by chemically breaking down bile acid. Could it be possible, asked Dr. Fieser, that human cancer could be caused by hydrocarbon carcinogens produced by the body itself? Hydrocarbons, which contain only carbon and hydrogen, are not normal body chemicals. But they might be produced by abnormal metabolism of body secretions, such as acids and hormones.

At Harvard, Dr. Fieser and his co-workers fed harmful carcinogens to rabbits. Some rabbits nevertheless failed to develop cancers. Examining the urine of these lucky beasts, the researchers found that the carcinogens had been "detoxified." The chemical mechanism of detoxification was similar in some ways to the activation of prothrombin, the blood's clotting agent, by Vitamin K. In fact, the evidence suggested that, when prothrombin activity was high, resistance to carcinogens and therefore to cancer might--just possibly--be high too. Therefore Vitamin K, the prothrombin stimulator, might--just possibly--keep animals from getting hydrocarbon cancers. Experiments to test this theory, said Dr. Fieser modestly, are getting under way at Harvard.

And at that breathless point he broke off his story.

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