LINDBERGH THE UNKNOWN

Evening Star, Issue 22843, 29 December 1937, Page 1

LINDBERGH THE UNKNOWN

INTERESTING POSSIBILITIES Word is that Charles A. Lindbergh; seeking proximity to Dr Alexis Carrel’s present European laboratory, may buy a Breton islet.’ This rumour may not bo true, but it reminds us that neither of these bio-scientists is a dilettante. So, knowing something of their previous endeavours, we may chart interesting possibilities. For outstanding achievements in experimental medicine, particularly in the maintenance of tissues and organs alive outside the body, and in the transplantation of organs from one body to another, Carrel won a Nobel award 25 years ago last October. His technique has given immortal fame and immortal life to a bit of chick’s heart tissue. To-day these cells live on, with ■ vitality undiminished after nearly a third of a century—and should be quick as long as our civilisation. To-day a wealthy man, if he is so minded, can provide for the immortality of whole sections* of his corporeal self—sections to be cultured ages after his soul has fled.

HU 1935, howevctr, a definite obstacle prevented any lengthy experimentation upon an entire living organ, such as a kidney after removal from the body. The adept, including Carrel, were sure of the fluid (real or artificial blood) needed to keep healthily alive the ■ organ’s complex group of tissues with this vital fluid by yoking a pump, or artificial heart, to a blood vessel ramifying through the organ. Yet the blood vessel would bulge and quickly sag under the pump’s pressure. The fluid would not flow properly. The organ would die.

Meantime, Lindbergh, guided by Dr Carrel, was secretly turning bioscientist. Then, in June, 1935, the ‘Journal of Experimental Medicine,’ official publication of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, set forth a modest report by these two men-against-death describing a new pumo, or perfusion device—the “ Lindbergh heart.” The obstacle had been surmounted.

Tliis artificial heart produces not .merely a forceful stream down the centre of the blood vessel, but also a gentle eddy .close along the artery’s inner wall. Thus, by this gentle eddy, the artery is itself fed, as it cannot be by the racing stream. And' it is protected against the full surge of the fluid. No longer does the vessel bulge or sag. The organ lives on. Lengthy, highly meaningful experimentation is made possible. No dilettante, Carrel has aimed his entire career at stretching the span of human life. No dilettante, Lindbergh, pre-eminent aviator still, comes to work with Carrel and helps to effect, a major advance in medical research. Possibly the chart, of their projected' course is a furthd*- ’ flight inus'iEe: chaos of senescence and death. More specifically, into the realm of organculture, perhaps even organ-growth; EARTH UNEXPLORED.

Though Lindbergh may now search mainly among creation’s loftiest mystifications—those of live plasm—a thrilling hint from one of his earlier adventures should not be hid by new aspirations and possible new discoveries. To-day men sigh, even as in Columbus’s day, that earth is explored, only little places remaining untrod, little in mystery and in significance. Venturous youth, to pioneer in novel realms, can but grow pale and spectre-thin, shut in with fumes of test tubes. The highly organised laboratory world alone now holds the promise which was once that of the whole, broad globe’s expanse. , Yet Lindbergh’s goodwill flight to South America was the longer and the more dangerous because he tarried to photograph lost cities unknown to archaeology. Later, French airmen, traversing the Sahara, wondered at lost but populous desert cultures, still untouched by explorers—because of the region’s impenetrability and warlike defenders. And Byrd has enhanced the lure of the Antarctic, once tropical, hence now rich in coal. Russians spent over a year floating on ice cakes over the North Pole, and distract attention from their other penetration—into Siberia’s frozen steppes. The Amazon forests, with their insect hordes, can yet swallow thousands like Fawcett, lost since 1925, whom only rumour keeps alive. The Guianas; Congo’s expansive dankness, teeming with parasites of sleeping sickness; West Australian wastes; Mongolia’s inner desolation; Greenland, Baffinland —all these land surfaces, too, are replete with untrod areas. But these are surfaces merely—with mere scratches. Miners do not descend as much as one and three-quarter miles in Rhodesia’s deepest boring. Oil seekers’ longest tools probe inward a bare two miles. The other side of earth is 8,000 miles away.