AID FOR ALLIES

Dominion, Volume 34, Issue 135, 4 March 1941, Page 5

AID FOR ALLIES

»• Jewish Scientists RESEARCH IN PALESTINE How a party of brilliant scientists,' many of them refugees from Nazi persecution, were working at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem on discoveries that may. greatly help the Allied cause was described by Dr. Walter Fischel, who arrived at Auckland from Sydney by the Aotearoa. Dr. Fischel is lecturer in Oriental history and languages at the Hebrew University and he is travelling to America, where lie will make a lecture tour. He speaks 14 languages.

“At the million-dollar American-built University medical centre thousands of eggs are being used to fight typhus,” said Dr. Fischel. “They have been inoculated with the virus and this is used,to make vaccine. This is the first time that this technique, cheaper and simpler than other methods, has been used. It makes Palestine and the Near East independent of European supplies —a highly important achievement, since one of the previous principal sources, in Lwow. Poland, is now in Soviet hands.

“Dr. Leo Olitzki is seeking a germ which has been killing hundreds of camels round .Gaza,” Dr. Fischel added. “His clues indicate that this is a strain of a type of paratyphoid, hitherto known -.only to attack human beings. Dr. Isaiah Leibowitz and Dr. Karl Guggenheim have made remarkable discoveries about Vitamin C, of which Palestine has a practically unlimited supply frojn its oranges. They have found that the vitamin neutralizes the poisons produced by many disease germs, including smallpox, diphtheria and lockjaw, and even poisons such as phenol and potassium cyanide. “On the economic side, Dr. Samuel Sambursky, a mathematical physicist, is trying to sterilize and preserve orange juice by means of high-frequency sound waves,*’ Dr. Fischel said. “He has succeeded in killing the bacteria without destroying the flavour and aroma of the juice, and 'is developing apparatus to do the work on :i commercial basis. , “A system of making alcohol from citrus peel has also been devised and there is a possibility of manufacturing higher alcohols and acetone, used as a base for explosives. Palestine’s surplus oranges may yet be turned into munitions for the Allies. Dr. Andor Fodor has a method for extracting sugar from orange peel, the process producing 3301 b. of thick honey from a ton of peel."