MARTYRS OF SCIENCE

Evening Star, Issue 19918, 14 July 1928, Page 22

MARTYRS OF SCIENCE

A NOBLE ARMY The death a few days ago ; of Dr Hideyo Noguchi, the world-famous Japanese bacteriologist, enrolls him among the martyrs of science who have sacrificed their lives in the noble war on disease and inspires a wealth of tribute in the Press to his herosm. Ho died in a fever-stricken' seapoio of the Gold Coast of Africa; a victim of African 'yellow lever, of which.he had just iden ; tilled the cause as a result of studying his own case . His death gives special point to a'cm rent magazine, article by Earl Chapin "May entitled ‘ Risking Death for .Science,’ contributed to i ‘ Popular Science Monthly ’ (New 1 York). Some of the experimenters whoso adventures ho recounts aetuallj i lost their lives, while others only ran ; risks and recovered, but all added to ,thc sum cf human knowledge, and some saved the lives of tousands by saerilic- : ing their own. Writes Mr May “‘Gas Kills Noted Surgeon.’ Buried in the news columns, a lew months ago, appeared that heading, with a briel announcement ot tho death, in Manchester, England, ,of Dr Sydney Rawsun Wilson, "distinguished surgeon and anmsthetist. No blaring headlines; only the short statement, that the doctor’s wife, entering his laboratory, found him with a mask over his face, lying before a machine which administered gas mixtures.' “Yet between the lines was the heroic story of a-martyr of modern scij once —one of many men who have sacrificed themselves to advance know I lodge and mitigate human suffering, I “For years Dr Wilson had experijmented with- amesthetics to develop one which would prolong that ‘border’ state in which a patient, though losing all feeling, still retains consciousness. ; Tho only way thoroughly to test his re- ! suits was to experiment on himself. Ho adjusted the gas mask over Tils face—and died. ' . “As this is written, a distinguished ichthyologist of twenty-nine years. Van Campeu Hciliier, of Spring Lake New Jersey, is sailing to the Bahama Islands on what - may seem a foolhard; adventure. Ho proposes to offer lih musciilar white body as a bait tor sharks, in order to answer the question : Will sharks attack and bite mon ? | “ Pure folly, one might say. But is lit ? For half a century naturalists have 'debated the shark’s supposed fondness | for human flesh. Tho question has remained undecided. Heilner believes that only ono species, the white shark, ! is dangerous, and that all others are harmless. To And out, ho will swim in the shark-infested waters of the Bajhamas, risking life and limb, though armed with a knife against possible assailants. “ Many experimenters have tried tho effects of poisons on themselves, hi tests conducted by Dr Linn J. Boyd to determine how much ol the poisons of insects the human body can absorb without serious suffering, fifty students in the New York Homoeopathic Medical College volunteered to take daily doses in capsules of poisons of spiders, bees, and other insects, over a period of six months. Fortunately tho results wore not disastrous, and a valuable contribntion was made to medic.-' knowledge. ; “No single act of heroism during the Great War surpassed that of Miss Mary i Davies, Welsh bacteriologist, who died in France a few weeks ago. She deliberately inoculated herself with gasgangrene germs to test a remedy lor tho terrible malady which killed thou sands of soldiers in the early war days. “At this moment Sir Henry Hind, the world’s leading authority on Parkinson’s disease, is slowly dying in Lonj don, the victim of this mysterious creeping paralysis which ho has tried for j years tp cure. Through his own ex--1 poricnces As a sufferer he is discovering new facts about the dread disease. Twenuty years ago Sir Henry had the I nerves of Ins left arm severed in order ; to study the problem of paralysis first i hand.”

Tho necessity for self-sacrifice has been faced by scientists for centuries, Mr May tells us In an era prior to artificial laboratory light, the Dutch hero, Jan Van Swammerdam, lost his sight experimenting with his crude sunlit microscope, through which he revealed tho anatomy of the honey bee. It was by conducting spectacular experiments on himself that Lazarro Spallanzani, an adventurous Italian of the eighteenth century, first _ revealed tho processes of digestion, which until then were deep mysteries. Mr May goes on:—

“One may imagine the consternation of his horrified fellows when Spallanzani, determining to explore his own alimentary canal, boldly swallowed linen bags containing bread. His friends frankly expected him to die of strangulation. What really happened was that when tho linen bags had traversed the Spallanzani stomach tho bread had boon digested and absorbed.

“ Now he swallowed little wooden tubes in which there were bits of meat, bone, cartilage, and tendon. And Spallanzani didn’t die From this experiment. He learned that tho meat, reached through perforations in the little tube, was digested by tho stomach juices, while tho harder substances were rejected and cast out. “Only the other day, Vilhjalmur Stefansson, tho famous Arctic explorer, gave himself to experiments to settle tho question whether a diet of fresh meat produces scurvy. With his personal physician, Dr Eugene F. Du Bois, lie entered Bellevue Hospital in New York City, where he planned to eat nothing but fresh meat, while submitting to daily tests for signs of scurvy.

“Sir Patrick Manson took his life in his hands to-'prove that malaria was not a solely climatic disease. Importing malarial mosquitoes, he exposed liimself to them in London and developed a severe illness of the disease. Happily, ho was able to cure himself “ Everyone should know the thrilling story of Dr Jesse Lazear, the heroic America who', thirty years ago, gave his life to prove that yellow fever is contagious only because its germ is carried by a certain kind of mosquito. Dr Lazear exposed himself to such a mosquito bile and died of ‘yellow jack.’ But largely through his self-sacrifice the scourge' of yellow fever no longer 'threatens the human race.

“His historic experiments were recalled recently when the American As sociation for Medical Progress bestowed a belated reward upon John R. Kissinger, former private in tlje U.S. army, a hero who likewise took a chance with yellow fever mosquitoes and became a lifelong cripple—all to save others. Following Dr Lazear’s death, the Walter Reed Commission, of which he had been a member, and which was studying the disease in Cuba, required further proof that the mosquito was responsible. Kissinger volunteered and permitted five contaminated mosquitoes to bite lain. Three days later he was raving with yellow fever For weeks he hovered between life ano death. And though ho survived, he never regained health. ‘ In my opinion,’ said Dr Reed at the time, ‘ this exhibition o( moral courage never has been surpassed in the annals of the United States arniv.’ “The enervating hookworm might still have its own way in tropical and semi-tropical countries if Dr .Maurice Hall had not' gambled with death by di inking a dose of carbon tetrachlorid. Hi- tests with animals indicated ’hat tetra'chlorid did not harm them, although it harmed the parasite. Hall wantfed to see if the effect on the human j system was the same. Tie tried it on 1 himself-ar-and lived. , I “The Gorman physician, Dr Rone t Remak, intentionally acquired and

cat id himself of ringworm. Suspecting a avian* fungus of responsibility for. this skin disease. Remak inoculated bunsolf with the fungus—and so found it guilty- , , , “So sure was Louis Pasteur Jiat he could '.ure rabies, ,or hydrophobia, <j*it uc pn-lined to inoculate himself. No one will ever know whether ho would have been a sacrifice to science, because Fate ordained that an Alsatian lad, Joseph Meister, should be brought to Pasteur suffering from a mud dog’s bite. Pasteur cured the lad, who to this day shares fame with great French scientific gqnius. “Nitrous oxide was looked upon as dangerous when Humphry Davy, inventor of the miner’s safety lamp, first experimented with it. The belief was that,, it made men unconscious, and might make them permanently helpless. Davy thought otherwise. He tried it on himself many times before he announced that ‘ laughing gas ’ might bo used successfully in dentistry_ and in other 11 surgical operations in which there is no great effusion of blood.’ “Sir James Simpson believed that chloroform could be used salely for surgical operations, but he had to prove it by trying it on himself, bis relatives, and associates. Quito often they were found unconscious, but they survived.”