INFLAMMABLE BOY

Gisborne Times, Volume LXXXII, Issue 12534, 22 April 1935, Page 3

INFLAMMABLE BOY

QUEER FREAK OF NATURE

Nature gets .-owe tunny ideas. As a result There arc two fellow-stud-ent#; at the University of California who are suffering in weird ways. One is turning to stone. The other is hvperphoto-K ns'iive. Which does not mean that he is likely to go mad and bite somebody, hut simply that he cannot live in the sunlight. If he stayed on a beach for a quarter of an hour he would be l'ke a halfcooked steak. The hist shall be first., lie is Robert J. West, he has a special room with red window glass. There he works for his honours like a honest young devil in an orthodox hell, ff he steps : ntn the sunlight unprotected, he itches at once; and in three minutes a red swelling appear.; on his skirt. No part of liis body is immune. There is nothing in the world the matter with him ns far as It is health is concerned. TTo is a pleasant, upstanding, frank young man. a good student, wholly concentrated on taking a. course of medicine. Tint he is so sensitive that the sun burns him immediately it makes contact willi lrs skin. Doctors have tried in vain to find out why. It is not due to heredity, not to personal metabolism, which is the chemical proportion of the body’s composition. A couple of American doctors have tried covering young West with a heavy coat of tan, appl:ed by means of an electric lamp. This worked io a small degree. But it only means that West burns in fifteen minutes instead nf three. So sensitive is his skin that even this coating is insufficient. A. protracted nterest is taken in this young man because he is more rare than quintuplets. There are only five people like him in existence. Two are in France, one in Oermanv, and the other one in America. Experiment; have been tried on him with light filters of vnr : oiis kinds. The red filter was found to protect him best, and to minimise whatever lightnotivoted chemical it is in the skin that causes lim to he «o sunburned. The r osult is the red window which tones him to the infernal shade above-mentioned. And when he goes abroad lie lias to be protected similarly by a special filter There does not, seem any possibility of curing him ; and when he takes his degree, liis surgery will be a tral on nervous patients with Its suggestive glow. Tt must be something in the air in California, for another boy in the same university is turning to stone! His story came to light when the fif)-yenr-olrl niglitwatchman of the seat of learning was charged with operating an illegal still. Til his defence, he said be needed money to help his son. “Mv hov, Albert lias A strange rb’ssense” be told the iudge. “He is If), and doctors sav that thev can do nothing for him. He is a brill ; nnt boy, studying medicine at the university. I couldn’t make enough monev to keep him at his studies—so I set up this still and made whisky.” Albert hopes that when he takes his degree he will by able to find a cure for his own trouble, which" seems to he due to metabolism. The theory is. that his system cannot eTininate the calcium which enters it, nor direct it in the right way. He had managed to keep his secret for six and 'a-lialf years, and only immediate members df the family, the doctors at the University Hospital, and at the Cowell Memorial Hospital, where lie is bc'ng treated, knew. After studying liis case, specialists said he was turning to calcium carbonate, the same material a,s limestone ’s made of. As almost every feed contains a percentage of calcium it is impossible to treat him by diet; mid the Cowell Memorial doctors avo trying to find .some other way just now.