Scientists Invent Machine To Discover How Brain Works

THE brain, perhaps the most mystifying organ of the human body, can now be scientifically studied by a new apparatus which photographs amplified “action currents.” Invented by Dr. H. H. Jasper and Dr. L. Carmichael of Brown University, the new machine will permit physicians to study the action of the brain just as the electrocardiograph permits a revealing study of heart action.

A headpiece on the head of the patient picks up electric currents of about one ten-millionths of a volt which flow from the brain in waves, at a rate of from eight to fifty per second. The currents are carried to an amplifying box where they are intensified 500,000 times and flashed across a glass disc. The ordinary currents are smooth and wavy; when the mind is disturbed, they are sharp and irregular.

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NAVY tackles Mt. Everest

In an epochal 30-day experiment the Navy “climbed” two men “higher” than Mt. Everest—without oxygen.

By CAPT. J. H. KORB, U.S.. Navy Medical Corps, as told to Jamea Kevin Miller

SCIENCE now has proved that flyers and mountain climbers can reach altitudes of almost six miles, remain normal and alert, and come away none the worse for wear—without supplemental oxygen.

It is only necessary that they accustom themselves gradually to the decreasing pressures and dwindling oxygen.

For this discovery, of much value in the planning of future upper air explorations, credit goes to a pair of venturesome young men of the U. S. Navy —Lieut, (jg) Walter S. McNutt, Jr., and Carlton R. Morris, Hospital Apprentice. Under the supervision of Lieut. Cmdr. Charles S. Houston, U.S.N.R., aflight surgeon and authority on mountain climbing, McNutt and Morris tested for an entire month, in Florida, an odd sea-level combination of mountain climbing and airplane flying called “Operation Everest.” The men lived in a compression chamber. They “flew” or “climbed” almost six miles without supplemental oxygen and suffered no ill effects. They reached a simulated altitude of 29,025 feet-23 feet higher than the unconquered peak of Mount Everest, the highest mountain in the world.

The program’s purpose was to study the adaptation of the human body to slowly increasing anoxia, or lack ofoxygen. As a result of its findings it may be possible to reproduce artificially the necessary physiological changes in an aviator in order to “acclimatize” him quickly before he reaches the upper air.

At the start of the venture four Navy volunteers entered the pressure chamber at the Naval Air Station, Pensacola, for a month’s exposure to the record-breaking conditions. Morris wasn’t on the regular “team,” but filled in when one of the original volunteers had to drop out because it was difficult to obtain arterial blood from his arm—one of the main tests needed to make the program a success.

Morris and McNutt reached the “altitude” topping Mount Everest, remained there for almost 30 minutes and didn’t lose consciousness.

The two other volunteers blacked out after the chamber had passed 27,000 feet and were revived with supplemental oxygen.

During their month’s stay in the lab-oratory chamber, the four volunteers were given the closest medical and scientific care and observation. Food was served them three times a day and they exercised on a stationary bicycle. They were shown movies each night. They slept on comfortable cots. They were under continuous observation.

Their day began at 6 A.M. when technician entered the chamber through an air lock to record temperatures, blood pressures and weights. Technicians, doctors and researchers wore oxygen masks when entering the chamber, to prevent the mental confusion which normally results from lack of oxygen. After bathing in GI cans the volunteers had breakfast, then they underwent physical and psychological tests. Some of these tests were continued even after they went to bed. Special contrivances recorded the men’s heartbeats while they slept.

There was a regular “climbing” schedule calling for the men to “go up” 2,000 feet a day for the first five days, 1,000feet a day from the sixth to the twentieth days and 500 feet a day thereafter.

Both men lost a little weight, but they emerged in tip-top shape, in large part due to strict diet control.

The test chamber was really something to see. It was of steel, about 20 feet long and perhaps 10 feet in diameter, with two doors about six feet apart in one end. Technicians and observers who entered the chamber did so by way of a small lock, remaining there until its air was reduced to the same pressure as that of the volunteers; and when they left the process was reversed. The chamber bristled with control appliances and was operated by a 14-man crew of experts.

It was interesting to watch McNutt and Morris as they “climbed” to their record-breaking height of 29,025 feet on the next to the last day. When they reached this height their blue complexions turned to a rather deep purple. (If this sounds a bit wild, let me explainthat men start to turn blue in the face after they’ve been exposed to heights of about 13,000 feet without supplemental oxygen.) At this point they were breathing heavily and looked definitely uncomfortable; but they stayed there without supplemental oxygen for four hours.

Other high altitude physiological studies are sure to follow this initial effort, for with airplanes reaching ever higher speeds and altitudes, means must be found to live through the failure of pressurized cabins or oxygen gear.

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Are Patent Medicines Dangerous?

BY ROBERT L. HEILBRONER

Down in Washington. D.C., a constant, unobtrusive cold war is being waged by three organizations—the Federal Food and Drug Administration, the Federal Trade Commission, and a quiet institution known as The Proprietary Association.

These three groups are vigilantly protecting the consumer against foods, drugs, and cosmetics that are adulterated, or labeled or advertised with false or misleading statements.

They also do occasional battle with the remnants of the once-famous quack-medicine makers, known to some as “the patent-medicine industry.” They were fugitives from justice, with a record both long and nauseating. Theirs was at best a cold-blooded operation built on the principle that there is no buck so easy to wangle as the buck of a person in pain.

These charlatans were not selective about their customers. They preyed upon the poor and ignorant, but caught some rich fish in their net, too. Some years ago, a wealthy Pittsburgh steel manufacturer fell victim to the lure of an advertisement for Radithor, a product described as an unfailing source of pep and vitality and an efficacious treatment for those diseases a man does not like to talk about in public. Radithor, which fortunately did not obtain wide distribution, was clearly labeled as “Certified Radioactive Water.” and it would provide pep and vitality—for a while. But when the victim died some months later, there was enough radium lodged in his jawbones alone to paint the dials of a whole string of luminous clocks.

In an equally deplorable case, a man gathered a weed known as horsetail, frequently found growing along a railroad right of way. and from this produced a concoction he sold as a cure for diabetes. The Food and Drug Administration took action against this man. and during the course of the trial showed that his “cure” had caused a number of people to discontinue insulin and proper diet and no doubt caused their death. The Government produced as witnesses outstanding specialists in diabetes, but unfortunately the Government lost the case and was thus unable to stop distribution. The case was lost when the Government was unable to prove the man knew his statements were incorrect at the time he sold the nostrum, an almost impossible thing to prove.

These cases were early in the thirties, when the Food and Drug Administration was operating under an act passed in 1906. Now a modern and drastic act passed in 1938 not only protects the consuming public but makes it easier for The Proprietary Association to deal with the few remaining patent-medicine makers of the past.

Under this new act the story is different. And so, had you been in Terre Haute. Indiana, last fall you might have attended the trial of an “herb doctor” who could neither read nor write but who did not let these trifling impediments deter him from turning mankind’s ills to his private benefit. The prize exhibit in this case was a pathetic woman who had come to him four and a half years before with a small cancer of the breast for which her doctor urged immediate surgery, with a 99 per cent chance of total cure. Instead, she was sold on a mixture of mint leaves, boneset flowers, and a little castor oil and milk. She appeared at the trial with cancer of the lungs, paralyzed from the hips down. This so-called “herb doctor” was convicted by a Federal court.

Just backwoods folks who don’t know any better? Let’s move to New York City, a locale hardly known for its naivete. Four years ago, in a good many newspapers and on one of the biggest local radio stations you could have learned the merits of a new “wonder product.” It was said this product would uncork arthritic joints and that it had been tested by a leading university (unspecified). It was not sold merely as a palliative but was directed at the “disturbances in metabolism” that underlie rheumatism, lumbago, neuritis, and arthritis. Before the authorities caught up with it, millions of dollars’ worth of it had been sold. The price: two bucks. The active ingredient: largely aspirin. The results: none at all. And this is only a sampling of the horror stories from the quack-medicine industry of the past. Most businesses and professions are plagued by an unscrupulous fringe, and the proprietary-medicine industry is no exception. There still lurk in the corners of our nation, sizing you up as a likely prospect, remnants of that quack-medicine industry.

Phony Cures for Everything There was a firm recently closed up in Cleveland that sold another phony arthritis cure and one in New Jersey that hawked a useless rheumatism cure. There was an outfit that obligingly mailed you habit-forming barbiturates without a prescription, and another that promoted a vitamin compound for “liver anemia.”

The term patented medicine means a medicine upon which the United States Patent Office has granted a letter of patent. Few of these products can be purchased without a physician’s prescription.

The term patent medicine is sometimes applied to the medicines usually found in the home medicine chest, but more commonly it is used by those attempting to prevent or disparage self-medication. They place all types of medicines, good and bad, in the same category with those distributed many years ago by the quack-medicine industry.

Some people will argue that you should not self-medicate. But the Congress of the United States has recognized the right of self-medication. One of its committees, in a report prepared to accompany the bill that finally became the present Food. Drug, and Cosmetic Act, stated: “This bill is not intended to restrict in any way the availability of drugs for self-medication. On the contrary, it is intended to make self-medication safer.”

The term proprietary medicine^ means that the manufacturer has a proprietor’s right to the manufacture and sale of the particular product. The brand-name medicines in your medicine chest are the proprietary medicines. In practically all instances, these goods are manufactured by a reliable organization that puts its guarantee behind the preparations.

The $800,000,000 proprietary industry that turns out the thousand and one things that treat our outsides and insides stands about as far away from the vicious fringe as the courthouse from the city jail. In contradistinction to the drug charlatans, the reputable drug industry has positively developed a crick in its back from bending over backward to see to it that the consumer can doctor himself safely.

But just as there are too many people who fall sucker to the drug frauds, there are too many who don’t know about or use the protection that is there.

“I think there’s something wrong with all patent medicines,” said a housewife I talked to in Washington. “I know I wouldn’t have them in my house.” I asked her if she kept aspirin there. “Oh, that’s not a patent medicine,” she said.

“I tell you how it is.” said an elderly individual I chatted with in Brooklyn. “These drug companies are all in cahoots, see? They sell the stuff your grandmother used to cook up on the back of the stove and charge you through the nose for it.”

“I once read in a book that they put ground glass in tooth paste to make your teeth shine,” a high-school student told me. “Is that true?”

It isn’t true—any of it.

Aspirin is a patent medicine as certain folks use the word, though truly it is a proprietary medicine, or a brand-named product. Its worth is proved, and it saves the American consumer untold doctors’ bills for the relief of minor woes.

Many Products Are Time-tested There are many products on the market that have been sold under the same brand name for a great many years, but they are not being turned out in a haphazard manner. They have withstood the test of years of usage, and most of them have been subjected to a thorough scientific study to prove their worth.

Perhaps half the drugs on sale now were unknown ten years ago, and they represent not hand-me-down folklore, but the best of laboratory and clinical research. Nor is the industry raking in gold shekels from the drug counters; it earns only a modest profit on its sales.

Furthermore, there isn’t any ground glass in tooth paste. Yes, there once was such a tooth paste, along with a soothing syrup for babies that contained morphine, and a horse liniment that was sold to the public for the cure of pneumonia, varicose veins, and tender feet. But these are relics of a bygone day when the consumer was always wrong. Today the drug makers spend about $15,000,000 a year just for research and control, and new products must be approved by the Government before being released for sale. For example, take the case of a well-known manufacturer, one of whose products suddenly and unaccountably went bad after a spotlessly clean record for well over fifty years. There was absolutely nothing injurious about this particular medicine—it just caused those who took it to become sick to their stomachs.

Even though the bad medicine represented only a small part of several million bottles in the hands of the trade, the manufacturer went to previously unheard-of lengths to recall every last bottle. To accomplish this, a warning was broadcast over every radio station associated with each of the national networks; large space advertisements were published in every one of the 1,700-odd daily newspapers from coast to coast, and last but not least, all of the manufacturer’s sales forces were given the sole task of locating and having returned to the factory every bottle on the market. Although millions of bottles—good and bad—were destroyed and none was available for about a year, this same product again enjoys a widespread—and even greater—demand. Today this medicine undergoes over a hundred tests before it reaches the public. As a result, the consuming public can again purchase this proprietary medicine with absolute confidence.

And that meticulousness is not confined to one company. A headache remedy recently put on the market was four years in the testing stages. A tooth-paste maker frantically embargoed shipments when he found that more water softener than the formula called for had turned up in a batch of paste. “You can’t take any chances in this business,” he told me. A gargle manufacturer during the last war faced a shortage of alcohol. Rather than dilute his product—which would have been unnoticeable—he kept it intact and took the loss in sales.

All this is a far cry from the shady practitioners who make the headlines. The fly-by-nights obey only the laws of the jungle, but the reputable industry has three taskmasters keeping it on the straight and narrow path. First is the Food and Drug Administration, guardian of the fifty billion dollars’ worth of food, medicines, and cosmetics that Americans buy every year. Its inspectors are apt to drive up unannounced and go through a drug maker’s plant from top to bottom.

“The danger to the public isn’t that the decent companies make quack medicines,” says George P. Larrick, deputy commissioner of food and drugs. “They work with us, not against us. The danger is with the medical quacks who put the whole home-medicine field in disrepute.” Thus, while Food and Drug may debate with the industry about the instructions that should appear on the label of a new medicine, its real concern is with such operations as a clinic it recently closed up in Dallas, where thousands of cancer sufferers took two medicines—a pink one and a brown one—at a yearly cost of $400.

Advertisements Are Screened The second taskmaster is another Government watchdog—the Federal Trade Commission. Last year its readers scanned something like a million pages of advertising matter, from lawn mowers to layettes, with a sharp eye out for the patent medicines that may gull the public with fraudulent claims. “It’s the rotten one per cent of the industry that gives us ninety-nine per cent of our trouble,” said one investigatory official.

The third taskmaster is the industry’s own answer to its public responsibility. It is The Proprietary Association, run by the stout, soft-spoken Dr. Frederick J. Cullen, whose quiet manner belies the fact that he has a Purple Heart and a silver star with palms to his credit as a wartime medico. Dr. Cullen, once an official of the Food and Drug Administration, now is adviser to the industry.

The objective of Dr. Cullen and The Proprietary Association is not merely an industry that is up-to-the-minute in scientific know-how but one that is socially honest as well. To this end they arrange scientific meetings among the country’s top lab and clinical men, and, more important, perhaps, they have set up an advertising advisory committee that firmly sits on the superlatives of admen.

Last year, over ten thousand pieces of advertising copy went before Dr. Cullen’s learned and disenchanted eye. “We’re not only after good taste in advertising,” he explains, “but we want to be absolutely sure that the public isn’t oversold on claims that can’t be backed. Advertising agencies frequently write copy saying that a remedy will kill a cold. We don’t let them say that, nor would the Federal Trade Commission, for that matter We can’t even let an ad say that a remedy is a good way to .combat a cold. Products recommended for treating colds can afford relief, but cure is something else. We watch for the word and take it out.

“Take this radio script. It talks about something ’stopping chest congestion.’ I don’t like that phrase-—such a congestion may indicate pneumonia—and I’ll suggest they change it.

“But no matter how much we police ourselves and no matter how vigilant Government agencies are, there’s only one person who can really put the fly-by-nighters out of business. That’s the consumer. We depend on public trust, and we do our best to earn it. We want the public to work with us in stamping out that dangerous fringe of our industry that is still a menace to our health.”

How is a consumer to tell the sheep from the goats?

Short of conducting your own laboratory analyses, you can do it only by making careful purchases. When you buy a proprietary medicine, you are pinning your faith on the manufacturer. Yet half the time you don’t even look to see who made the product you’re buying. If you deal with a reputable druggist, there’s no reason why you should—it’s his business to carry only the best in stock.

But there are warnings you should heed, warnings in which the Food and Drug people, the Federal Trade Commission, and The Proprietary Association all join: 1. Beware of all ads with the word cure in them. Proprietaries, even the best of them, do not claim to cure anything. Their business is to relieve pain, to help you over the unpleasantness of symptoms, not to do the work that only nature can accomplish. Note that the best-known drugstore remedies do not claim to cure you. They aim to help you.

2. Stay away from all drugs claiming to treat diabetes, cancer, arthritis, or joint rheumatism. These are serious ills, and any attempt to doctor yourself before you’ve had professional counsel may result in worsening your condition. There are no reputable proprietaries that make hopeful claims for these diseases.

3. Beware the testimonial ad. That’s not to say that testimonials aren’t a perfectly honest method of advertising. But when testimonials are hitched onto drugs claiming to fix up this and that, or when they exceed the claims included in labeling, think twice before you become convinced. Just remember the sad case of the man who came to court to back up his written testimonial for an illicit anti-TB drug, and then died before the trial was over—of TB.

4. Don’t fall for extravagant claims, especially in medicine. By and large, the better the product the more restrained and factual its advertising. “Miracle.” “amazing.” “sensational,” etc., usually mean that the advertiser hasn’t got clinical data to put before you.

5. Watch out for health foods. Sure. vitamins and minerals are good for you. Just don’t go for the concoctions that serve them dressed up with obscure hints about their relations to diabetes, rheumatism, and the like. One firm recently under Federal fire had 15,000 salesmen out selling a health food that didn’t say it would cure anything but pointed out that people who weren’t taking it were dying of all sorts of alarming diseases. Nai’ve? Its sales ran over a million dollars a month.

6. Think twice before you buy from door-to-door drug salesmen. Most reputable drug houses sell you through your drugstore, which is where you should go to buy medicines. However, reliable manufacturers do distribute various types of products, including medicinal preparations, from house to house, particularly in rural areas. It is extremely important that you know the salesman and the company he represents. Be cautious about the nice-looking lad with the gift of gab; when he talks to you in the privacy of your parlor he doesn’t have to answer to the Federal Trade Commission for the claims he makes for his product.

7. Don’t ask your druggist to sell you something he’s not supposed to. The proprietaries have been passed on by the nation’s best authorities as being safe for home use. You are not only asking your druggist to break the law when you ask him for a prescription medicine without a prescription, but you are trifling with your own life.

8. Read the label! It’s not there for advertising purposes; it’s there to keep you out of trouble. Drugs are not candy; when it says “one every four hours,” it doesn’t mean one every half hour.

9. Know the brand names and their manufacturers. It takes little difficulty or time to obtain information concerning the reliability of a manufacturer who produces medicines. You should be informed about the manufacturer of the brand-named products you include in your medicine chest. A reputable manufacturer stands squarely behind his product.

And having done all that—relax. If you don’t know what you’re doing, if you are unaware of the safeguards that have been set up for your own protection, it is possible to fall into some of the most unscrupulous hands in America when you don’t feel so good and start thinking about dosing yourself. But if you take advantage of the protection that is there, your medicine chest should house the most dependable products in your home.

The End

HERE’S AN EYE OPENER FOR YOU!

THE Electrical Show recently held in the Grand Central Palace, New York City, presented showings of several very novel electrical devices. One of the most practical inventions was a magnetic instrument for removing metallic particles from the human eye.

The human optic is very delicate and must be freed from any bit of lodged matter at once. If chips are allowed to remain within the eyelid they work into the eye-ball and nearly always cause blindness.

This machine has at last answered the cry for a painless method of removing metallic deposits from the eye easily.

First-Aid Booth

THE Germans have designed a street first-aid booth which seems to have everything. Well, practically everything.

First, naturally, there’s a first-aid kit and a folding stretcher on wheels. This is so light it can be pushed by a child. Then, there’s a public telephone and a fire alarm. For the policeman on beat, there’s a special wire to the station and on the wall is a mirror for last-minute grooming. On top of the booth is an illuminated clock and a blue light which blinks if somebody wants a policeman.

If plumbing facilities had been available there’d probably be a kitchen sink, too.

If Ruptured…

LET ME SEND YOU A FREE SAMPLE OF A STRANGE AIR-BREATHING, FLESH-SOFT SUBSTANCE THAT IS USED IN, A DEVICE THAT HAS ENDED TRUSS TORTURE. FOR THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE, BE MODERN! DON’T WEAR DIRTY LEG STRAPS, LEATHER PADS, HARD RUBBER CUSHIONS OR SEVERELY STRAPPED BELTS ANY MORE. DON’T GO THRU’ THE YEARS AFRAID OF EXERCISES — CONSTANTLY HAUNTED BY THE FEAR OF YOUR TRUSS EASILY SLIPPING OFF AND THE RUPTURE “COMING DOWN.”

LEARN HOW A TINY FOUR OUNCE INVENTION BUTTONS RUPTURE WITHOUT CRUEL PRESSURE. GET YOUR FREE SAMPLE OF THIS MATERIAL TODAY. SEE IF MODERN SCIENCE HASN’T CREATED SOMETHING BETTER THAN YOU EVER IMAGINED POSSIBLE. —Mail Coupon Below at Once!

John G. Homan, Director, New Science Institute, 1175 Clay St., Steubenville, Ohio.

Without obligating me in any way, send my free sample of your flesh-soft, air-porous material and full details of your new hygienic method that ends truss cruelty.

Have Your Next Tooth Filled Electrically!

NEXT year when you go to a dentist to have a tooth filled he may connect the cavity up to a small dynamo and fill your tooth electrolytically with gold or silver, in the same way that metal articles are gold or silver-plated.

Dentists are working along these lines because the prevailing method of making gold inlays involves the use of wax impressions, which frequently are slightly inaccurate, leaving unfilled pockets in the tooth as a source of future trouble. Cavities would be coated with chemically pure graphite as an electric conductor, filled with an electrolytic liquid bearing a solution of a gold salt, and the current turned on to deposit a perfect filling in the tooth.

Brain Waves Are Measured with Radio Amplifier

With an ordinary radio set for an amplifier, a young scientist at London is measuring brain waves. A fairly regular electrical wave emanates from the human brain during normal thought, but the waves diminish during sleep. The intensity of the waves is measured on an electric meter, enabling research men to study the relative intensity of thought processes.

DOCTOR BY RADIO

DR. GUIDO GUIDA, 60, founder and unpaid head of Rome’s International Radio Medical Center has treated patients via radio from his own home for 17 years. Career began when childhood friend died at sea. Italian government recently assigned six Naval operators to aid him.

Alcohol No Danger to Kidneys
THE traditional idea that alcohol is bad for the kidneys, the heart and arteries, is exploded by experts of the American Medical Association. If alcohol injures these organs traces of these injuries should be found in the bodies of drunkards at the post-mortem examinations. Instead of this the evidence is that the hearts and kidneys of drunkards are better than the average condition.

Bee Sting Makes Youth Human Film

WITH a skin as sensitive as a photographic film, Robert J. West sunburns severely after a few minutes exposure to sunlight. In an effort to diagnose his own ailment he has switched his studies in the University of California to a course of physiology.

No part of his body is immune in its reaction to sunlight; exposed for a period of three minutes, his skin crisps and forms painful blisters. Consequently, when in the open, he either muffles himself in a heavy overcoat and pulls his hat low over his eyes, or he insulates himself with a covering of red, sun-resistant Cellophane.

He drives to and from school in a darkened car, and carries on his class-room work with red Cellophane curtains over all windows, as even glass will not protect his super-sensitive skin.

Insofar as physicians have been able to determine, this strange condition was brought about through a bee sting which West suffered while working in his garden. It is believed that some infection has set into the blood stream that is ultra sensitive to the blue ray in sunlight. As yet, blood tests have revealed no conclusive irregularities in the youth’s makeup.

New Instrument Makes Eye Muscles Stronger

Although it might well be some particularly avid photographic fan having quite a bit of difficulty focusing his candid camera, the odd photograph above actually shows a patient strengthening his eyes with the aid of a new optical instrument developed recently by scientists attached to the research staff of the American Optical Company, in South-bridge, Mass. An ingenious and complicated arrangement of mirrors, lenses, and lights that combine to produce stereoscopic images, the apparatus is designed to put the human eye through a series of strengthening movements and thus build up weak eye muscles that are often the cause of crossed eyes and other defects of human vision. At the right, above, is another view of the stereoscopic optical machine which Dr. J. F. Neumueller, one of the research scientists associated in the development of the corrective apparatus, is adjusting for the benefit of a patient behind the instrument.

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Science Transplants Babies

BY LESTER DAVID

The embryo conceived by one mother has been removed from her womb, stored by refrigeration, then transplanted to another mother for normal birth. Mother’s name Is “Mrs. Rabbit”—some day it might be Mrs. Jones.

IF YOU could mate a man and a woman—could let the embryo get just a start, then transfer it to the body of another woman to complete its prenatal growth and be born—that would start a revolution in human genetics, wouldn’t it!

It’s just been done with rabbits.

It certainly will be done next with cattle.

And just as certainly it will some day be possible with human beings!

To a brilliant young Chinese-American, Dr. Min-Chueh Chang, an experimenter under Dr. Gregory Pincus, head of the Worcester Foundation for Experimental Biology, goes chief credit for the startling new two-mother rabbit.

Dr. Chang’s work is no laboratory curiosity. It is intensely practical. For example, it will eventually affect the size and juiciness of the steaks on our dinner tables—and the frequency with which we can have them. For beefsteaks do not come from just any kind of cattle. There are strains no good at all for beef, but which may give lots of milk. There are other strains that are fine for beef but poor for milk. Still others, scrubs, aren’t particularly good for anything.

Now, it is the chief task of breeders to produce healthy strains which give maximum amounts of a product (like beef or milk) of high quality. Working for beef, they have done much in the last hundred years, supplanting the lean, wiry, poor-for-beef Texas Long-horn with square breeds heavily upholstered with luscious meat—but the process has been slow. It takes a standard amount of time for a cow to have a calf; the process can’t be hurried. At one experiment per prize cow per year the improvement of cattle breeds proceeds at a snail’s pace.

Scientists wondered, How can the process be hurried, so that ten experiments can be made where only one is made now?

Noted experimental biologist Dr. Chang proceeded on the most likely road. He “meddled” with Nature’s standard routine. Two prize animals were needed for conception, he reasoned—but why tie up the female for all the time needed to bring the offspring to the point of birth? Might it not be possible to take the prize female’s ovum soon after conception and transfer it for development to any ordinary female, valueless for breeding? The transplant would contain all the valuable gene combinations given it by its two prize parents; the second mother would merely supply blood for nourishment and a place to grow, without altering its heredity in any way. And the prize female would quickly be ready to start off another prize offspring in some other desired combination with a selected prize male.

All stock breeding experiments would be accelerated. Desirable strains would be produced much faster. And there would be much more prize stock around for both experiments and large-scale breeding.

No wonder the animal breeders hailed Dr. Chang’s “motherless” rabbits with enthusiasm.

And no wonder the geneticists were immediately interested too. Here was something new and practical—something which gave promise of adding a new chapter to human breeding.

It was because of their far shorter birth process and their small size and ease of handling that Dr. Chang chose to begin his experiments with rabbits.

He soon found that one of his big problems was that of keeping the fertilized eggs of the conceiving mother until they could be placed in the bearing mother. He worked at techniques. Now he can keep the fertilized eggs alive for as much as 144 hours before transplanting them to develop and be born.

He keeps them in a refrigerator!

Storage on ice—that is the thing that excites the animal breeders. Their artificial insemination technique is valuable, but it is restricted to the use of sperm cells. The sperm cells of prize cattle are used to fertilize prize females and thus produce more desirable stock; for example, it is common practice to preserve by refrigeration the sperm of famed Argentine bulls and fly it to various parts of this country. But because of the storability of transplants on ice, breeders now foresee the day when the prize cattle’s fertilized eggs themselves—not the sperm—can be preserved long enough for them to be flown wherever desired.

And then, arriving, they can be transplanted into mothers of ordinary breeding in the new country—as much as ten thousand miles away.

Dr. Chang found that transplanted fertilized eggs flourished. They grew just as big and healthy and the young finally were born just as normally as if it were their real mothers that were seeing them through their pre-natal life.

So—human mothers, in the days to come, need have no fear that fertilized ova transplanted to them will result in children that are not healthy and completely normal. Nor need unmarried women fear social ostracism by undertaking motherhood in this way. Of course the first cases may get publicity and cause comment; but it is difficult to see how anyone can criticize any woman who must remain unmarried, or who chooses to remain unmarried, and has a baby in this way. No breach of morality occurs.

Since it is normal for women to have children, and many women who can’t have them undergo psychological stresses, the transplant technique would fulfill them, and make them far more normal and valuable human beings. This is the case, too, with the many women who cannot or should not have children because of their own bad heredity, or that of their husband.

Toward all this, the first step, and probably the most important one, has already been made with Mrs. Rabbit. Here is what Dr. Chang did in his laboratory to arrive at his results: The eggs of super-ovulated rabbits (rabbits which can produce superior young) were stored in pure rabbit serum at low temperatures for varying lengths of time and then cultured at 37 degrees centigrade for 24 hours to determine whether they would grow normally. He was looking, at this stage, to see if normal cleavage, first step in development, would result.

He found that if he cooled the fertilized eggs rapidly from 25 to 0 degrees centigrade immediately after removing them from the mother rabbits, and then maintained them at the 37-degree temperature for a day, there would be no growth.

On the other hand, if he cooled the eggs slowly, from 25 to 0 in a five-hour period, he had happy results. This proved to him that the ova are subject to temperature shock upon rapid cooling but can be acclimatized to lower temperatures by gradual reduction.

Then Dr. Chang wanted to know—as did all animal breeders and geneticists along with him—just how long can these eggs be stored and still remain alive? He investigated, and found that at 10 degrees 53.8 per cent lived after 72 hours, and 23.6 after 144 hours.

Now Dr. Chang came to the vital question. Would these refrigerated babies-to-be develop into rabbits if he transplanted them into the bodies of female rabbits?

He injected the foster-mother rabbits with gonadtrophin to induce ovulation, rested them for 24 hours and then inserted the stored eggs into their Fallopian tubes. In each instance, from four to 15 eggs were transplanted into each rabbit.

It worked. Litter upon litter of fine, prize rabbits came from the foster-mothers. All the young were healthy, normal and genetically true to their real parents!

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UNUSUAL BIRTHS

Nature rarely errs, but when it does the results are often most extraordinary.

by E. H. Herrick, Ph.D.

IF you are acquainted with identical twins, you have probably never thought of them as the result of a birth abnormality. Actually they are, though in this case they can consider themselves lucky.

Many of these abnormalities are not so fortunate, although we rarely hear of them. Most end up merely as another case in the records of clinics and hospitals unless they are quite extraordinary.

Identical twins develop from a single fertilized egg and grow as any other one for a time, but not for long. For some unknown reason, the early embryonic cells separate into two masses and a complete child develops from each.

This separation of the cells into groups that usually hold together as one, is the basis for calling identical twins a birth abnormality—even though they are so well known that we accept them as a usual part of life. The condition is known in cattle, dogs, and other animals as well as in human beings.

Since the two develop from a single cell, both have the same inheritance pattern and that is why they are so similar in appearance. Identical twins are, of course, always of the same sex.

We have called identical twins an abnormal development, so now we may ask if there are also abnormal types of such twins. There certainly are. One of the pair may not make proper attachment to the womb to get sufficient nourishment and as a result it is much smaller than its mate or it may not continue to develop at all. Sometimes the death of the one may interrupt development of the other.

Occasionally, one embryo stops growing when it is so small that it does not disturb the larger one, and its tissues are resorbed. The mother may never know of this condition, and it can even be missed by the attending physician.

It is a little difficult to prove for certain, but there is evidence that some people who are very strongly left-handed are the “left-hand” individuals of a pair of identical twins in which the “right-hand” one failed to develop. If it were the right hand one that survived, no one would know about the other.

Just what do we mean by a “left-hand” twin? In this duplication the masses of cells set up a pattern so that the two embryos undergo a face-to-face duplication or a back-to-back pattern.

Such a duplication gives a “mirror image” condition, with the right hand of one duplicating the left hand of the other. Identical twins are known in which even the finger prints of one are duplicated in mirror image pattern for all ten fingers of the other.

Side-by-side, or even end-to-end, development is known, as evidenced by twins that were not completely separated. These co-joined twins are often popularly called “Siamese twins,” though each has a different technical name.

The degree of joining (or of separation) varies and we see almost the full range of attachment —from a simple strip of skin between the two to a single body with two heads. Many joined twins can be separated by simple surgery but if vital organs such as the liver are involved, separation is pretty well out of the question.

One pair of co-joined twins received a great deal of publicity in the press a few years ago because the tops of their heads were connected. Surgery resulted in the death of one, but the other survived for some time. The birth of two-headed individuals is well known, but the great majority die at birth or soon after—the usual fate of most that are severely malformed.

Birth abnormalities include a wide range of conditions aside from those involving identical twins. Among the most common are hare lip and cleft palate. These conditions result from failure of these parts to grow together completely.

If you are 50 years old or older, it is likely that you have seen a number of persons with a hare lip, but if you are younger, not so many. Does that mean that embryos do a better job of developing in the age of automobiles?

Not at all, for in recent years nearly all such cases have been repaired surgically at such an early age that we don’t see them. Failure of the arms to develop is a rare condition. Somehow the embryonic limb buds stop growing or do not grow as usual. In one such case, the arms were present in small size but grew along under the skin of the body and were entirely useless. This person would amaze you, however, with what she could do with her feet and toes—even to the extent of writing and making change in her little art shop.

A rare but well-known abnormality is failure of the diaphragm to grow entirely across to separate the chest and abdominal cavities. A loop of the intestine may push up among the heart and lungs. Recently a routine chest X-ray of the chest revealed this condition without the patient ever having suspected its existence.

Abnormalities of the reproduction system have often been described in this magazine so we need mention just a few. The urethra (urine duct) in the male may open at the base of the penis instead of at the end, a condition known as hypospadia.

Both ovaries and testes may be present in one person’s body or there may be one ovary and one testis. These reproductive bodies may be entirely missing in some persons who otherwise appear to be reasonably normal. The uterus (womb) may be entirely absent in a woman, or a sort of uterus may be present in a man.

A condition that seems very strange, but quite understandable to an embryologist, is the presence of one or more extra mammary glands. Even though undeveloped, they may be present in extra numbers in men as well as women.

If we were to catalog all the abnormalities that result from unusual embryonic development, it would include virtually every part of the body.

Most of them are in the nature of deficiencies or failure of a part to develop at all or failure to develop at the proper time in relation to progress of other parts of the body.

Timing is considered very important, for if an organ or a part of an organ is interrupted in development, it may never recover from the impairment.

Almost everyone is curious about some of these abnormalities and immediately wants to know why these happen. People have been curious about these unusual structures for a long time, for lists of them were made in old Greece before the beginning of the Christian era.

The famous Pliny in the first century, who was interested in so many things, said of these abnormalities, “Nature creates monsters for the purpose of astounding us and amusing herself.”

At an early time these freaks were called “monsters” from an old Latin word that meant “warning.” And as in so many other things, first ideas bore a note of superstition. It was believed that, when a monster appeared, it was a dire warning that something dreadful was about to happen.

Certain taboos were associated with monsters too for it was believed that intercourse during the menstrual period might result in monster development. In old Hebrew writings we find: “Menstruous women shall bring forth monsters.”

Maternal impressions, falls and bruises came in for their share of credit too, and probably there are people now living who still give considerable credence to these.

Creatures that were half-human and half-animal were favorite subjects of classical mythology. Mermaids, centaurs and many others were described and pictured. Since these mythical creatures were so popular in early stories, many people believed in their existence and supposed that they developed from human and animal parentage. Modern studies indicate, however, that there is no evidence that any human-animal cross has ever been successful.

More modern views include two lines of thought. One is that some- thing causes an interruption in the growth of the embryo. There may be a partial loosening of the placenta so that blood with its supply of oxygen does not get through to the embryo properly or that the umbilical cord is twisted too tightly or there is pressure on it.

Even a very brief reduction of oxygen is believed to stop or alter the course of embryonic development. Vitamin deficiencies may result in impaired development and we are pretty certain that an inactive thyroid gland of the mother has an influence.

In the experimental incubation of chicken eggs, a lower or higher than normal temperature results in many abnormal chicks. A common condition here is a doubling of a portion of the spinal column. This factor, of course, usually does not enter the picture in human beings since the temperature is pretty constant.

A second general reason for birth abnormalities is that something happens to the genes and chromosomes of the germ cells. In the formation of the sperm or egg, the microscopic portions that normally cause the development of the structures of the body are not functioning properly.

Whole chromosomes may be lost from the germ cells as they develop, leaving the embryo without the usual directors of development.

Other than seeing to it that the mother has good health and proper nutrition, we cannot do much to prevent birth abnormalities. With the hundreds of structures that must develop to make up a complete body, it is one of the great wonders of the world that so many people are born with a reasonable degree of perfection.

References Arey, L. B.: Developmental Anatomy, W. B.

Saunders, 1031. Guttmacher, Alan F.: Life in the Making, Viking Press, 1933. Newman, H. H.: The Biology of Twins, Univ. Chicago Press, 1917. Riddle, O.: Am. Jour. Anatomy, 32-199- 252, 1923. Stockard. C R.: Am. Jour. Anatomy, 28:115-277, 1921.

Vaporizer Works in Water Glass

Hung from the edge of a glass partly filled with water, an electric vaporizing unit now available produces a medicated steam for inhalation by those suffering from respiratory ailments. The unit can be plugged into any alternating-current outlet.

Swallows New Camera to Get 16 Pictures of Stomach

A CAMERA so small that it can be swallowed without discomfort takes sixteen pictures of the inside of the stomach.

A two inch long metal cylinder contains the camera, a roll of film, and a tiny flash bulb capable of 20,000 candle-power illumination. The control plunger runs through a two-foot rubber tube attached to the cylinder.

This unusual medical camera was developed at the Henckenbach clinic of the University of Vienna by Dr. O. Porges and other physicians. It is expected that pictures taken with it will show the first stages of gastritis, cancer, and other disorders which often cannot be seen on X-ray plates until too late.

An air pump forces the walls of the stomach away from the sixteen tiny lenses when a picture is snapped.

Each of the sixteen “shots” are developed into circular pictures two inches in diameter which taken together give a complete i representation of the inside of a patient’s stomach.

Solar Bath Apparatus Helps Cure Diseases of the Head
NO, THE peculiar looking device in the photo at left is not a camera, nor even a telescope, although partially resembling both. It is a new solar bath apparatus for the head and has made a great hit with the medical fraternity of Germany. The main purpose of the device is to cure sicknesses of the head, like catarrh of the nose and throat or of the ears. It reposes on a stationary upright and has an opening in under side for a patient’s head. Affected person sits in a chair while taking treatments. An ultra-violet ray machine within throws artificial sunlight upon all parts of the head. Eventually, when fully tested and improved, it is expected to cure many of the illnesses of the head.

Electric “Ear” Helps Photograph Heart Beats

Photographic records of pulsations of the human heart are produced by a portable instrument containing an electric “ear” and equipment for converting sound into light. The electric ear, a sensitive condenser microphone, picks up the heart’s sounds, which are amplified until they can be heard through a radio loud speaker. The amplified sounds are converted into a vibrating light beam which is focused on a rapidly moving strip of photographic paper. At the same time, the light is projected on a ground glass screen on the control panel of the instrument, so that the light variations may be watched by the operator. Earphones enable the operator to hear the sounds at the same time. The strip of sensitized paper records the light any defect in operation of valves or muscles, measure comparative intensity of the different sounds of the heart beat, time the pulse and obtain other valuable information. The apparatus is contained in a case eight inches wide, twelve inches high and twenty-one inches long. It weighs less than thirty-eight pounds. The machine operates on 110-volt house current.

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OH, YOUR ACHING HEAD!

Montefiore Hospital’s Headache Clinic is seeking to eliminate our head woe
MONTEFIORE Hospital’s famous Headache Clinic in the Bronx, N. Y., is the largest in the nation and for the past ten years has been trying to find a cure for the head misery that plagues more than 12,000,000 Americans. Clinic patients are examined for eyestrain, brain impulses and blood flow to the head. Where no organic defect is found, doctors can often relieve headaches with psychotherapy. People with migraine headaches, it has been discovered, are generally of superior intelligence. Aspirin, anyone?

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Body Can Take Heat that Boils Water

SWEATING it out in a metal box at more than 250° F., University of California at Los Angeles experimenters have proved that the human body can take temperatures that would cook meat and boil coffee—but only for a short time. The tests are being conducted for the U. S. Air Force to find out how pilots would react should the cooling apparatus fail in the supersonic planes of tomorrow (see Cooling “Hot” Pilots, p. 110).

The reason the body can withstand temperatures previously regarded as fatal is that it acts as its own refrigerator. Evaporation of moisture through the skin forms a boundary layer of cool air in which the body wraps itself. Subjected to temperatures of 200° F. and more the skin heats only to about 105°, while the body hovers around a safe and fairly comfortable 100°.

The sweatbox used in the experiments is a metal-sheathed cylinder, five feet in diameter, that served to test aircraft instruments during the war. Electric strip heaters, thermostatically controlled, produce any desired -heat. Already several volunteers have taken 220° F. for 15 minutes and more. Dr. Craig Taylor, in charge of the project, has “cooked” at 262° for two minutes, and is warming up for a 300° session.

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Plants Grow “BLOOD” for Human Health

THE ancient sun worshippers, it now appears, had a theory of life, and its relationship to man, which has now been proven scientifically sound.

The chemists, biologists, physicians, have discovered that life comes from the sun. Furthermore, that plant life and human life are chemically related if not one and the same basic thing. Out of the laboratory of the organic chemist comes substances that show such a relationship.

Physicians have for many years been advising people to eat more green vegetables. “Old stuff!” you say? Yes, comparatively. But the green foods, such as lettuce leaves, spinach, kales and others, contain vitamins, needed by the human laboratory of the body.

Blood and the green of the leaves (chlorophyll) are practically identical. Chlorophyll contains carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and magnesium. The only chemical difference in the organic construction of the chlorophyll in plants and haemoglobin in blood is that the former contains magnesium while the latter contains iron.

German chemists taking their chlorophyll product that they derived from the leaves of growing plants, made them into pills which they gave to patients in clinics and hospitals, keeping a minute medical record of results. These pills, which may well be called “concentrated sunshine,” produced amazing results. The facts, as recorded in the unemotional, matter-of-fact statements of the German scientists, would show that these chlorophyll pills reduced high blood pressure, eliminated anemia, made weak men strong, cured digestive troubles, and seemed to be in fact, a pill of youth.

Once in the digestive stream chlorophyll immediately enriches the blood. The red blood cells immediately increase in number while their haemoglobin content rises. (Hemin, of the blood, and chlorophyll, are practically identical.) The blood thus enriched and reinforced with new life is able to bring about amazing recoveries.

The eating of green foods is taking chlorophyll into the body’s chemical laboratory, but the taking of a concentrated form is merely a short cut in giving the body a tremendous amount of it and the reaction is positive. The sunshine that the plant caught and benefited by is thus passed on in the form of blood-life for the human being.

Dr. Schertz, an eminent American chemist, suggests that chlorophyll gives us the clue as to just what life is. He has found a way to extract pure chlorophyll from plants easily and cheaply enough so that it can be used commercially, although he was not the first to isolate it.

The humanly useful place of chlorophyll is explained as the one link of nature for the converting of energy into matter. The energy reaches the earth in the form of sunlight and cosmic rays. By some mysterious process this energy is transformed in the plant into matter. The chlorophyll plays the chief role.

tain you are catching the gold. And as you wash out rough material in the hopper of any of these outfits, keep alert for chunks of quartz containing free gold; that might indicate a lode mine up-creek.

These are simple, low-cost hand-operated, home-made pieces of placer working equipment that increase your efficiency from 6 to 12 times above panning. Your original prospector’s outfit will cost less than $5; these machines should not cost more than $15 more. On $1 ground two men can make expenses or better if they are willing to work at sluice, torn or rocker.

One important warning; always be sure you are to true bedrock, for the richest gravel is right atop the rock and pockets or old crevices overlooked by early miners may be the richest spot on your claim.

In our next article we will give information regarding the low-cost, highly efficient, portable, ready-to-go outfits called “placer machines” which will double each man’s capacity and efficiency over cradle, sluice or long torn. One such machine has a record of producing about $1,200 per month in rich ground. We are going to give the information regarding these machines because the man who has cleaned up a little “stake” by pan or sluice can take another step ahead in building up to good returns by using some of his capital to increase efficiency of each worker. Also in the next issue we will tell of the “dry washer” used on placers in the desert.

Grow “Blood” for Human Health Dr. Schertz’s extraction of pure chlorophyll is the result of 12 years of experimentation. He has produced this essence of concentrated sunshine—so closely aligned to the blood itself— on the largest scale ever known. His apparatus consists of an electric drying oven, a “ball mill,” a “screening machine,” a silver-coated separator of the super-centrifuge type, and a group of large funnels, pyrex tubes, almost twice as tall as a man, and numerous flasks.

“My very first step,” explains Dr. Schertz, “is to select a desirable kind of leaf or plant. The kinds of plants most used in my tests, are blue-grass, spinach, cow-peas, or stinging nettles.

“My next step is to have the entire plant structure cut clear down to the ground. Whereupon the stems, leaves and all are placed on a tray in an electric drying oven where they remain for from 12 to 24 hours. Next the dried leaves and stems, along with a supply of stones, are placed in what is known as a ‘ball mill,’ and ground into a fine powder, which then is separated from the coarser stem material by a ’screening machine.’ “Next comes the extraction process. The leaf powder is soaked in acetone and run through a large funnel where the four pigments are extracted by the simple process of adding more acetone. The final stage is to run the liquid chlorophyll through a silver-plated separator of the centrifuge type, which removes all impurities, and results in a solid mass of almost pure chlorophyll in the bowl of the centrifuge.”

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Be Young at 100!

By Roger Dunham

Those creeping years worrying you? Forget it—old age is mostly superstition, doctors discover.

HOW long will you live? Fifty, 70, 80—maybe even 100 years—a whole century?

Till the day you die you’ll probably keep thinking you can always squeeze out at least one more year from those old bones of yours. And ever since 1848 when the average American dropped dead before 40, we have indeed squeezed out extra years until today our national life span has stretched to 67.

That’s still far short of the century mark. Yet some medical experts now say that not only should you live to be 100 but keep breezing right along, hale and hearty, for another half-century.

Living to be 100 is kid stuff, according to Dr. Edward L. Bortz of Philadelphia, a former president of the American Medical Association. A dog is full-grown at two years, but lives, on an average, to be 12; a horse, mature at four, lives to be 25.

“Man,” Dr. Bortz points out, “reaches physical maturity at 25, emotional maturity at 35, intellectual maturity at 45. Spiritual maturity comes at even later years.

“A human being should have a life expectancy of 150 years.”

Two leading scientists, Dr. Theodore L. Klumpp, Winthrop Chemical Company president, and Dr. Maurice L. Tainter, Sterling-Winthrop Research Institute director, back up Dr. Bortz in his belief that you should live more than twice as long as current life-expectancy tables say you will.

“The success of our efforts to prolong existence to this supposed natural life span depends upon our ability to maintain the lifeline of blood supply to the body tissues,” Dr. Klumpp says. “Few die from old age; they die prematurely from degenerative diseases.”

A new science called Geriatrics seeks to combat these diseases and make you active and productive all your life.

Dr. V. Korenchevsky, of the Gerontological Research Unit at Oxford University, which is studying old age and its effects, thinks that the human span can be extended to 112 or even beyond. But he feels that the main aim should be to make old age firmer and healthier, not merely longer —in other words, “to add life to years, not just years to life.”

Life begins at 70, in the Geriatric Clinic of Boston’s Peter Bent Brigham Hospital.

“We tend to assume that after 65 a person loses his usefulness and becomes a second-rate citizen,” the clinic’s officials state. “This is not so. Old age should not bring the depression it does.”

Recently a conference of medical specialists and surgeons at the DeCourcy Clinic in Cincinnati concluded that you can keep your vigor despite the advancing years. Those years alone won’t bring you old-age troubles, the doctors found. If you think you have to lose your pep or start falling apart from senile decay just because you’re getting old, you’re suffering from a “time neurosis.”

“Every human tissue is endowed with potential immortality,” the doctors decided, “when adequately provided with food factors, oxygen and suitable warmth, and when removal of wastes is carefully effected. Time has no effect on human tissues maintained under such conditions— or, indeed, on human tissues under any conditions. . . .

“Belief in the effects of time tends to reduce ambition. Therefore, expectations and endeavors are curtailed. All those who develop a time neurosis subscribe to the prevalent superstition that time is in some way a poison exerting a mysterious, cumulative action.

“The obsession itself may be the cause of definitely premature aging. Confidence and hope are diminished; continual worry decreases efficiency and increases nervousness and irritability. Life assumes a somber hue. Imaginary symptoms are noted with increasing frequency. The mind or the heart may seem to be failing. . . .

“When a time neurosis is treated successfully, the patient becomes younger than at the time he entered your office.”

The chances for living to be 100— and liking it—are far better today than they ever have been before. If you were a woman, those chances would be even finer, since there are four times as many women centenarians as there are men.

One of these long-living ladies was born in Belorussia during Napoleon’s Russian campaign. Her name is Maria Nikolaevna Kuzmich, and she is still enjoying an active life in her village, Ostrovschina Polotzk. In all her 135 years of life she has never been ill.

In this country “Uncle Jim” Wilson, a Negro, of Vidalia, Georgia, lived to be 120. Four years before his death, in December, 1945, Uncle Jim walked into county welfare headquarters and asked if he qualified for an old-age pension. The U.S. Census Bureau checked and double-checked, and finally verified his birthdate—May 15, 1825. Uncle Jim was born in slave quarters in southeastern Georgia, not too far from his home at death, 120 years later.

His recipe for long life? A diet of lean meat, eggs, cheese, biscuits, milk and living moderately.

On the other hand, Uriah Stohler, who passed his 104th birthday last year in Kleinfeltersville, Pa., swore off meat entirely at an early age, and recommended only one meal a day for long life.

But these venerable characters are still in short pants compared to the mother of Ahmah Gaga Singh, who claims to be 112 himself. He states authoritatively that she is still living in Nepal, India, and is just 160. His grandparents, he reports sorrowfully, are no longer living.

James M. Lurvey, a boy of 100, in Goffs Falls, N. H., attributed his longevity to sturdy ancestors, big breakfasts and morning coffee “with a little stick of whiskey.”

On his 100th birthday last December, Lurvey admitted: “I’d like to have some brandy in my morning coffee instead of whiskey, but it’s a bit too high for my pocketbook.”

Captain Dennis Tormey, an ex-tug and coal-boat skipper, who celebrated his own centennial on Staten Island this year, openly sneers at the “live-moderately” faction of centenarians.

“When I went to sea, I drank hard liquor,” he proclaimed on his birthday. “I never took good care of myself and I never expected to live to be 100 years.”

On one point, virtually all centenarians and medical authorities are in complete agreement—the lazy life is a peril for the older folks.

Dr. Clarence A. Neymann, Associate Professor of Psychiatry in the Northwestern University Medical School, recently warned anyone who has retired not to give up all activities. If you strive to be blissfully idle, you may have to reckon with senile dementia, a condition he described as a “gradual narrowing of the mental horizon, with interest in the outside world giving way to preoccupation with the immediate surroundings, a disregard of today’s happenings in favor of those of yesteryear, and eventually the confining of interest to the primordial stimuli of food, sleep, warmth and other bodily needs—a childlike state.”

Miss Florence Dolph, 101, of Dunmore, Pa., is an ardent subscriber to Dr. Neymann’s beliefs. By way of celebrating her 101st birthday last year, she started the festivities by sliding down the banister—as is her custom every birthday. In answer to a newspaperman’s query about her technique, she pointed out heatedly that she slides astride the banister—not in the effete sidesaddle manner.

A certain similar pattern of living runs through the statements of most centenarians who try to arrive at the reasons for their longevity. Most, for example, feel that strong drink has assisted them materially in turning their personal century.

The same Dr. Bortz who thinks that we should all live to 150 calls whiskey a helpful tonic to the aging—”a lift to the spirits and soothing to the jangled nerves.”

“Whiskey,” he adds, “is certainly one of the best sedatives when used in adequate quantity.” It is, he sums up, probably the most useful aid a physician can enlist in treating elderly patients.

A well-balanced diet is another help in hitting a hundred. Gereaud Van Dyne, of Rochester, N. Y., attributes his healthy 103 years of life to good food, well prepared. His cook? None other than Gereaud Van Dyne himself.

“I feel younger as the years go by,” he says happily.

On his 100th birthday, Edmund Welden, of Valley Falls, N. Y., observed that he was thinking of getting married when he reaches 110. “I probably would have died when I was 50 if I’d been a married man,” he added.

But the advantages of single blessedness throughout life are strongly questioned by Pundit Mahangoo, of Georgetown, British Guiana, who celebrated his 106th birthday by getting married for the third time.

Another point that comes up with any examination of the habits of centenarians is— Watch Your Step! Countless centenarians who were “never sick a day in their lives” died suddenly after falls—usually involving a broken or injured hip.

A Mr. J. C. Bee-Mason, a British bee expert, says authoritatively that anyone can live to be 100 by letting as many bees as possible sting him as the years go by. This is the procedure confidently followed by Mr. Bee-Mason, who has not yet, however, become a centenarian himself. Before rushing out to follow his advice, it might be a good idea to see whether he finishes that hundred race.

But one of the most unique, and tasty, recipes for living to be 100 is provided by Mrs. Susan Stewart, of Saxonburg, Pa., who celebrated her 101st birthday early in 1948. Mrs. Stewart recommends doughnuts—after they’ve been properly dunked, of course.

“I’ve dunked doughnuts by candlelight, by oil lamp, and by electricity,” she reminisced on her recent birthday.

Many of the oldtimers we’ve mentioned have followed their own pet recipe for reaching 100. They’re often at odds about just how they did it. Here are a few tips, though, that may help you stretch out the years toward that happy hundred:

1. Go light on your diet when you find it heavy going on the scales.

2. Drink moderately and only to relax and be sociable—not excessively nor to drown your sorrows.

3. Keep active—at both work and play. Lazy people seldom live long. So, don’t retire from life—till you’re ready to leave it!

4. Stop worrying. It won’t do any good—and it will help raise your blood pressure, upset your stomach and lower the spirits of everybody around you.

5. Laugh at yourself now and then. If you don’t, other people will—and it won’t be so funny for you. Laughter gives you that wonder-working longevity vitamin— happiness.

6. Be friendly with your doctor—but don’t pester him with imaginary ills.

7. Forget all you ever heard about the troubles of old age. It’s mostly superstition, anyway.

How long will you live? Who knows? But, remember, you can stay young in heart and health all your life—even if you do live to be 150! •

Fever Machine Treats Rheumatism by Short Wave Radio

THE treatment of rheumatism by short wave radio is among the benefits which radio engineers have bestowed upon modern medicine.

An instrument which makes this possible was demonstrated before scientists recently in New York. Known as the “Radiotherm,” the device works on the same principle as a short wave transmitter. The generator is contained in the cabinet, while the radiating discs act as an antenna.

The “Radiotherm” can produce artificial temperatures as high as 98 to 105 degrees. More than 500 treatments have been given.

Pocket Vapor Bulb Operates Like Flashlight

As handy as a fountain pen, an electric vaporizer that works like a flashlight has been designed as a “pocket relief” for colds. In the head of the tiny metal case is a special bulb with two openings. A few drops of a nasal inhalant are inserted from the side. When the thumb switch is pressed, the “flashlight” batteries generate heat in the filaments of the bulb and vaporize the liquid, which is then inhaled from the top of the bulb, acting on congested nasal passages.

Halitosis Clinic Studies Causes of Bad Breath

To discover the cause and cure of offensive breath in human beings, a novel halitosis clinic has just been set up at the Northwestern University Dental School in Chicago, Ill. Patients exhale through their mouths into a tube kept cold enough to solidify organic substances in the breath as they pass through. The frozen mass is then liquefied and tested by means of an osmoscope, an instrument shaped like a piccolo, which measures the concentrations of odors. Tests made so far indicate that offensive breath is most noticeable in the morning and that it tends to increase in concentration with advancing age.

Hay Fever Falls Before Zinc Ions

HAY FEVER, that mysterious malady that deprives thousands of persons of their enjoyment of summer-time, is slowly yielding before the assaults of science.

The malady, which attacks the mucous membrane of the nose and throat, causing symptoms not unlike a severe head cold, is usually caused by pollen of a number of plants, the chief offender being ragweed.

At the University College Hospital, London, hay fever is being successfully treated by zinc ionization. An electric current is employed to release the zinc ions from a solution of zinc sulphate. These are passed to the patient by means of tubes, counteracting the irritation.

Eye Ailments Cured by Dry Heat

EYE inflammations are being successfully treated with dry heat by a new and ingenious apparatus introduced at the annual meeting of the American College of Proctology.

The electric controlling unit automatically heats and circulates water through hollow rubber pads held over the eyes by the patient. The temperature of this water is constantly controlled by the physician.

CROSS-EYES NOW CURED BY PICTURES
Curing cross-eyes is play for youthful patients at a New York eye clinic, opened recently. A child places a pair of attractive picture slides in an instrument resembling an old-fashioned stereoscope and manipulates the device to make the pictures fuse together. Thus he tries to trap a lion in a cage or catch a butterfly in a net. Through corrective exercises of this sort, a cure is often effected without recourse to a surgical operation, which hitherto was nearly always considered necessary.

MORNING NOT BEST WORK TIME
Contrary to long established belief, the ability of most persons to work more swiftly and accurately on rising from a night’s sleep is not as great as it may be at other times. This was one of the many surprising facts discovered during a new series of sleep tests conducted by Dr. Nathaniel Kleitman of the University of Chicago. In his experiments he used the electrical recording instruments shown above. With them, he charted the effects upon sleepers of alcohol and drugs.

Bed Helps Blood Circulate
OFFERING almost immediate relief to heart victims a new motor-driven bed, which rocks the patient in teeter board fashion, has been developed for hospital use. It is the belief of leading medical practitioners that the rocking effect of the “Vasocillator,” as the bed is called, will bring persons suffering from a heart attack through the crisis substaining them until the heart is once more able to function normally.