GLAND DEFENCE?

Evening Star, Issue 22516, 8 December 1936, Page 3

GLAND DEFENCE?

FROM DREAD DISEASE INFANTILE PARALYSIS An internal gland defence against infantile paralysis, the first ever recorded in medicine, discovered in experiments on 24 monkeys, was reported recently by Dr W. Lloyd Aycock, of the Harvard Medical School to the American Public Health Association (says the ‘ Chicago Tribune ’). . One of the glands which controls growth of mucous membranes distinctly increased the resistance of monkeys to the paralysis, he reported. One of the greatest puzzles of infantile paralysis is to find the persons who are susceptible. If that can be done medicine already has means of protecting them. This monkey discovery, Dr Aycock said, opens a way for solution of the puzzle. “We have,” he said, “a way of experimenting which we never had before.” The belief that internal glands are the reason why most persons escape serious attacks of infantile paralysis has recently grown rapidly among medical men. It is based for one thing, Dr Aycock said, on the longobserved fact that infantile paralysis does not attack children who are “ run down ” so much as those who are “ run up.” The victims most often are the healthiest appearing and mentally brightest children. HOW TESTS WERE MADE. In the monkey experiments, all 24 animals were treated so that one of the endocrine glands controlling membrane growth diminished its secretions. The membrane linings all became ■ weakened. After that halt the monkeys were given a gland extract, estrin, which restored the weakened linings. Next all the animals were artificially infected, with infantile paralysis. The monkeys receiving the gland extract did not catch the disease as easily as the unprotected 12. Seven of the gland-protected monkeys lived through the paralysis attack. Only two of the unprotected 12 lived. Analysis of the heart and circulation I by examinations of the eye, which is regarded by physicians as the window to the entire body, was also described before the American College of Surgeons. Dr William Thornwall Davis, of George Washington University, Washington, D.C., declared that examination of the eye by looking direcfly into it reveals the first sign of hardening of the arteries and clues to the occurrence of other heart troubles.

“ Ninety-six per cent, of all cases of hardening of the arteries show characteristic changes in the blood vessels inside of the eye, all of which can be seen readily by direct examination,” he declared, “ and many persons who have the disease in its early stages are now being found, and, as a result, can be cured or the disease arrested.”