HOW SCIENCE IS AIDING MAN

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 154, 26 March 1938, Page 8 (Supplement)

HOW SCIENCE IS AIDING MAN

Some Of The Marvels Of Research

Quietly, behind the scenes, men are devoting their lives to fighting for the health of you, or someofie you know. Here are the stories of some of them, says John Middleton in the “Sunday Chronicle.”

Getting up in the morning, putting on a suit, or dress, that has been made from birchbark, you will some day in the not-so-distant future dine off food that has been manufactured synthetically from sawdust. What is more, you will like it better than the natural article-4t will have a better flavour. This is no Wellsian view of the future. It is ' already an established fact, due to the genius of one man, Friedrich Bergius, the famous German scientist and Nobel Prize winner, who has been engaged on research of this nature for about: 35 years. This German scientist first invented a process for extracting oil from coal —but he kept his discovery to himself, for commercially it was not perfect. ’■ At last, however, he was ready. He offered the invention to his Government. Germany, just about to plunge into the Great War, seized it joyfully. With Britain blockading every port, it was only this oil from coal which enabled them to hang on. But greatest of all Bergius’s achievements was to make sugar from wood. It is not ordinary sugar, but glucose, the basis of all foodstuffs, two tablespoonfuls of which, chemists claim, are equal in food value to a whole meal.

In the later stages of this process Bergius had the assistance of an Englishman, Dr. W. R. Ormandy, a research chemist from Wigan, in Lancashire, now settled in London, who joined forces with him ten years ago. Dr. Ormandy is interested in the system, particularly from the point of view of this country, for Britain, according to the latest figures, has only 1,580,000 acres of land under oats—less than half the woodland acreage. This means that Britain, if equipped with the factories, could draw on 3,000,000 extra acres of land for a food supply in time of emergency. The chemist has only just begun to work in this sphere of feeding people on sawdust, Some day the housewife may be able to cook the Sunday joint by radio—arid cook it in ice!

In a series of experiments which have just beeii completed a steak was placed in cold water, a button was pressed which released ultra-short wireless waves, and the steak was grilled —cooked in a cake of ice.

, A similar experiment was made with a fish, which was fried at freezing point.

What happened was really quite a simple process. When the ultra-short waves were passed through the w’ater they had the effect of setting up warming currents in the steak, which is a conductor of electricity. .. It is all part of the latest branch of science known as frostology, the chief exponent of which in Britain is Sir Joseph Barcroft, Professor, of Physiology at Cambridge. For the purpose of his experiments, Sir Joseph recently went through the sensations of death from freezing, locked up in a special cold chamber. “A moment came,” he said, describing his experiences, “when I stretched out my leg. The sense of coldness passed away. It was succeeded by a beautiful sensation of warmth. The word ‘bask’ most fitly describes my condition. I was basking in the cold.”

Some 17 years ago Professor J. J R. Maeleod, head of the medical school at Toronto University, was wakened in the middle of the night by a servant. There was a man waiting downstairs, he was told, who wanted to see him urgently. -

He found, pacing his study, a gaunt, bespectacled young man. in the late twenties, who. as he entered the room, turned and said: "The name is Banting.” “I believe. ’ lie said, as the professor looked at him inquiringly, "that I have found a way of treating diabetes.” “To carry out my experiment,” said Banting, “I want eight weeks’ run of a laboratory iu the university, ten dogs, and an assistant, preferably a medical man.” The professor agreed. Banting went home to London, Ontario. Quite calmly he sold his house and furniture, gave up his practice, and asked his fiancee "to wait for him.” Then be dashed back again to Toronto, and with a young doctor named Best, started off on the great adventure. The rest of the story is now common knowledge. How he experimented, first with dogs, then an unborn calf, and finally a man, until there was discovered insulin. Now’ Banting is engaged in an even more vital line of research, seeking a c-e for cancer. In a quiet room in the Rockefeller Research Institute iu New York, trained scientific observers night and day watch, growing under their very eyes, the first human robot. Some years ago in that same institute Dr. Alexis Carrel, the scientist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for his work ,in transplanting the organs of the human body, war told that a visitor wanted to see him. Impatiently glancing at the card, he was astonished to see that it war Colonel Lindbergh. The airman diffidently explained his mission. Human hearts had been made to beat again after their removal from the bodies of dead people. Hearts of animals transplanted jo the bodies of other animals had been kept beating as long as the “adopted” bodies lived. A chicken’s heart had been kept alive for more than three years apart from its body. Why not create, ne asked, some sort of scientific container In which it would be possible to keep the vital organs of men and other animals alive and functioning for an indefinitely long period outside the body to which they belong? Although a trained engineer, he found that he lacked the biological knowledge necessary to develop the idea. Would Carrel join forces with him? The scientist thought the matter over, and decided that he would. Suddenly, last summer, the two men decided to retire to the seclusion of the little island of Sr. Clidas. off the coast of Brittany, where, in this lonely island fortress, they sought to make their artificial heart vitalise a nervous system. . ' Y The brain of a dog was transplanted into the “life chamber.” The artificial heart,- beating-sixty times a minute to the prompting of a (.constant bloodstream run by compressed air, was made to provide the necessary life force. Essential nerve connections were contrived between the two organs.

When recently Carrel and Lindbergh returned to New York they took their robot with them. Night am day, turn ■and turn about, so that the half animate object is never left, scientific research workers watch this artificially stimulated brain.