DOOMED BOY’S SACRIFICE.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LII, Issue 72, 24 February 1932, Page 10

DOOMED BOY’S SACRIFICE.

STUDY OF HIS OWN DISEASE. Tho death of Alfred S. Reinhart, of Dorchester, U.S.A., a 24-year-old honours graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Medical School, brought to light an unusual story of sacrifice for science. Knowing from boyhood that he was doomed to die early, he devoted his time to - systematic study of his own case and details and symptoms of his suffering. Rheumatic heart conditions in boyhood brought bacterial endocarditis, but knowing the danger of death, tho boy pressed his studies, gaining high honours in school and college. He made copious notes of his own condition, and Yvlien a few months ago bright red blotches appeared oil his skin shoiving that death was coming, he entered a laboratory so that his plight might aid science. He refused drugs which might have relieved his pain, and dictated each new pain and each recurring manifestation of the growth and spread of the disease in the hope that his sacrifice might help qthers and possibly lead to the discovery of some moans of alleviating the disease. A special room was provided for him in the laboratory of Boston City Hospital, and there he died, dictating to a stenographer and explaining to Dr. Soma Weiss, of the .Harvard Medical School Faculty, who will publish a record of the case.

Dr. L. P. Mark, a London physician, who died in 1930, after suffering for 45 years from acromegaly, continued until two days before his deatlr to record his mental and physical symptoms as fully as possible, refusing to allow pain to interfere with the detached outlook needed for the effective. execution of the task. ;