MARTYRS IN THE CAUSE OF SCIENCE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVI, Issue 14109, 10 July 1909, Page 5 (Supplement)

MARTYRS IN THE CAUSE OF SCIENCE.

DOCTORS' SELF SACRIFICE: EXPLORERS' PLUCK.

T , timber, 1906, there appeared in the I Medical Journal a letter from- Dr. Sail Edward*, president of the Bri-W-lectro-Therapeiitic Society, appealing v! lsh X-ho!p in'the way of suggested ♦hodflo cure himself of a cancerous Erfh caused by constant exposure to Xg The disease is known as X-rays derIStk and seems, by all accounts, to oe t s''the most cruelly painful maladies S which mankind can suffer. "I have ST- wrote Dr. Hall Edwards in this let- ' -'experienced a moment's freedom from * f -n for more than two years, and at times |ff, in is «> severe that lam rendered llntely Capable of work, whether ' * til or otherwise. In the cold weather IP! unable to dress myself, and the pain nerienced cannot be expressed in words. « the back of each hand I 'nave from 50 to : : E warts, many of them confluent. In ifsler to excise the£o it would bo necessary l ? 1 remove. the whole of the skin from the | V* -kof the finders and from the greater iilrfc of the hands. Drugs have so far failj*S to give me the slightest relief. * . ' The excruciating, ever-present pain appears r Vbe due to a permanent irritation of the •S&eous nerves which nothing relieves, d w» icn ' :<? intensified by holding the • I ds in a dependent position and by cold. L 'pain is of a neuralgic character, it !ever ceases, and is intensified from time to time by sudden stabs and jumps of such i severity as to make one cry out." Mipr. Ball Edwards is one of the pioneers [the X-ray treatment, ft was by the aid H a radiograph taken by him that the very iS oF rat011 of the kind was performed. lln 1900 he went to South Africa as radiolo[list' and published the results of his exferiences with gunshot wounds. Soon after L return the malady which has made his ■'fife one continuous torture first appeared. He understood well enough the ghastly r threat, yet never for a moment ceased his work or experiments. He took to gloves jad other forms of protection, but it was too late. The mischief was f'one, and noth- ■ m was found to stop the spading of the I ulcers. " ' • • . . ■ ■ '- Since that pitiful letter of two and a■i yf years ago the disease had become so much worse that it was found necessary to amputate, the sufferer's left arm. Yet up • to the very day previous to the operation the experimenter was at work in his laboratory, and at the time of the present writ- ' fog his only fear is that he may not be able ! to" complete hie. book on the subject for '■ ; vhieh he has made such amazing sacrifices. Nor is Dr. Hall Edwards the only mar- , tyr to the mvsterious and cruel influence of iheKontgen rays. In 1897 Mr. Clarence Dallv, cnief assistant in Mr. Edison's laboratory, did several weeks of experimental work, during which his hands were conftaiitly exposed to X-rays and to contact irith highly fluorescent materials such as ', calcium tungstate. The first symptoms of | injury were that his hands became in--gamed .as though scalded with boiling inter, and his hair and moustache fell out. There was, however, no pain at the time, «aly slight soreness and numbness. Two ■ jears later cancer developed in the left ■wrist, and soon the other hand became dfected. '$ Everything was done that science could suggest. As* many as 150 pieces of Iffkin'were taken from his legs and grafted upon his hands, but all to no purpose. The 'disease went on spreading. Soon the left arm had to be amputated, next the sacrifice of the little finger of the right hand became necessary, and in June, 1903, three other fingers were taken off. Eventually ; the whole of the remaining fore-arm was removed.'and artificial arms provided. The f disease stul continued to spread, and after I seven dreadful years kindly death cut short the torment of life. A third X-ray experimenter was the French doctor,' M. Radiguet, who died in r December, 1905, after two years of similar Bufferings. His last words were an expres-* am. of fervent thankfulness that be had f ten permitted to live long enough to estab- ? fish reliable evidence as to the effect the friars upon the human organism. .The list of victims to the deadly influence /of the rays is by no means complete. There was Dr. Louis Weigel, one of the greatest ] American authorities on the subject, whose ■'.end came in June, 1906, after no fewer I '• than seven different attempts by operation to save his, life; Dr. .Blacker, of St. inomas' Hospital, who died in 1904; while many other experimenters and operators lave suffered severely. Mr. Edison himslf, upon whose mastoidal bone an operation has recently been performed, is said to have had the focus of one eye disturbed, -and to have been afflicted with curious J lamps upon the cl -st, the nature of which ' has not beet! diagnosed, but which are .'suspected to be due to the effect of the rays.

■ The pluck and self-sacrifice of the medical profession are proverbial. In the routine of his ordinary duty, more especially while engaged in research work, the doctor comes constantly into contact with all kinds *of contagion and infection. Of course he takes precautions, but after all he is only toman; he cannot always guard against the insidious attack of the deadly bacillus. A typical case is that of Dr. H. W. Syers, physician to the Great Northern Central Hospital. , One day in October, 1906, while examining some organs in the post-mortem toomof the hospital, he gave himself a r slight wick—so slight that it did not even oraw blood. - Two days later the finger Became painful, and was at once cut open and dressed. Too late! The poison, a virulent streptococcus bacillus, was thoroughly established in his system, and in lees than a week he was dead. - _ During the Spanish-American war the ' Waited States troops in Cuba suffered far 'Wire severely from yellow fever than from '.' bullets" of their enemies. " Yellow «ack" lias been the curse o: Cuba time out ofmind, and a number of American army doctors at once instituted a campaign --: !I »st the disease. A serum was discovered by Dr. Caldas which, it was beI beted,would' counteract the effect of the ever germ/ and volunteers were asked for ™ would permit themselves to be bitten By infected mosquitoes so that the effect of m seram.might be thoroughly tested. A wrge number offered themselves, nearly all ""Jig doctors or nurses. As the . induoe."Knt held out was the paltry sum of 100 Wars, and it was stipulated "that the subm; were to take all risks, it is hard'y Possible to suggest that those who came jprward were actuated by any other mo- '"« than those of science and humanity, Pe esp er i men t s proved "deadly. . Two turWons who' permitted themselves to be bit«a by mosquitoes fed on the blood of yel««.fever patients died, one of them being • i " "izear, assistant-surgeon 'to the mihm board. Miss Clara Maaa, a trained "$W from; Orange, New Jersey, was an"Wr victim. Her death occurred within '"OP days of having been bitten by two "'tlmil 6 infected anopheles. Two medical .'„:.?■- also - caught the fever and came ,"Wan an ace of death.

SLEETING SICKNESS. . . This question of the spread of infection ■; (L™ Bftf8 ftf different kinds has engaged '* attention of the medical world f -r some of /J* I **' and at ie present time scores Thi x tlen Mxperimenters are in the field. ■' r.v1.1 l ' known German, Profe«or koca, M ■ V 'Pent 18 months on a desolate Ja¥Sm the middle of Africa's great inland inv« ; J lctoria Nyanza, engaged in the &-H gatn of that strange and terrible ■v.to ta« sleeping sickness. His only "' Eton panion was an army medical sur<halt' * n « - during the whole year and a■thite tay he Baw but three other oat of lUen \ A roll native canoe hewn c aim,*,* S <" gle lo B"wa8 "is only means of SSS? mcat,ni! ~.k h the mainland. The &* '"aci? th- curious discovery that »..-..; ''crocodiles are i\»nnd the disuse f;,:■ ';■ . dlscove red. Jhe blood of croco- ■■ t'Stlio. f«i ilys -' forms the chief nourishment i (tore*. 6im l>«ipalis, the insect which ' • rms of keeping sickness. '' idtakT*. vtw ardent scientist ran contra we rwk. but happily he has returned

home in the best of health and spirits. The worst scourgo of our own country is tuberculosis, and fighting the " white death" has occupied the lives of many patient investigators. Some, like Dr. Robert Scott, have laid clown their lives in the campaign. Dr. Scott, who lived at Grangerville, near Newcastle, made extensive experiments upon monkeys, inoculating them with tuberculosis germs, and afterwards placing the animals in hermetically sealed cells, into which a breathing mixture largely composed of oxygen and ozone was pumped. Some were completely cured. Dr. Scott exhibited their lungs to a jury of medical experts, and convinced them that all trace's of the disease had vanished. _At last he himself contracted consumption, and, a firm believer in his own treatment, had a special "condensed, pure air" chamber prepared for himself. Alas! he died a martyr," like so many before him, to his zeal for scientific research.

In January, 1904, Professor Vincent Rodella, a. well-known Italian scientist, was found dead in his laboratory, having unwittingly inhaled the fumes of a prussic acid compound which he was preparing. His age was only 30. His portrait is in the hall of his university, with this inscription below it: " Died too young, but not without glory." Dr. Calmette, head of the Pasteur Institute at Lille, is another sufferer in the cause of science. While preparing his now famous snake-serum he was bitten in the hand by a cobra, and only the amputation of the finger saved his life. explorers' records. Descriptions of death by disease and poison are of necessity gruesome. It is a relief to turn to the records of explorers. Those who penetrate wild lands in the cause of science too frequently undergo terrible sufferings, and sometimes fall victims to their ardour. Yet pain or death, when one is facing the frosts of toe Arctic, the sands of the desert, the dank heat of the tropic forest, or the spear of the savage, is not unexpected, ai-J is therefore less repulsive than that which is incurred in the crowded haunts of civilisation. How plainly the explorer foresees his possible fate was proved by a conversation between Andree and Mr. "J. Stadling, who stood by when the ill-fated balloon was ready to sail away into the unknown North, and who wrote the story later in the Century Magazine. " Suppose the balloon should burst, what then? "We shall be drowned or crushed," replied Andree. "When may we hope to hear from you?" "Not before three months at least. A year, two years may elapse. And if not—if you never, hear from usothers will follow in our wake till the unknown regions of the North have been surveyed." *

Arctic exploration is full of stories of incense suffering, of uncomplaining heroism and self-sacrifice. It is very difficult for one who has never travelled beyond the Arctic circle to picture even faintly the sufferings which result merely from climatic conditions in the far North. A few lines from Lieutenant Peary's description of his crossing of Greenland give just a glimpse of them. The wind, he says, i? never at rest on the "Great Ice, and always it carries an ice-drift a foot or two in depth. In the savage blizzards of a frozen Sahara this drift becomes a roaring, hissing, blinding Niagara of snow, rising hundreds of feet into the air, a driit which almost instantly buries any quiescent object, and in which it is almost impossible for the traveller to breathe. Even when the depth of the drift is not in excess of the height of the knee, its surface is as tangible and almost as sharply defined as that of a sheet of water,, and its incessant, dizzy rush and strident sibilation become, hen long continued, as maddening as the drop, s drop, drop of water on the victim's head in the old torture-rooms."

In 1902 Mr. Dillon Wallace and Mr. Leonidas Hubbard made an unsuccessful attempt to cross the huge, barren peninsula of Labrador. Food ran short, there was no game, and their sufferings became terrible. " Our bones," writes Mr. Wallace, " were sticking through .our skins. Hubbard and I were like walking skeletons. Hubbard grew so weak that he could not proceed farther, and we left him wrapped in a blanket, arid pressed on in search of food." When they returned he was dead .

There is probably no explorer alive who has suffered more physical hardship than Dr. Sven Hedin, that plucky Swede to whom we owe nearly all our knowledge of the geography of Northern Tibet. The story of his race in the desert against death by thirst is too well known to be repeated here. It is, however, doubtful whether his sufferings on that occasion exceeded those on hia journey from Charlik to Ladakh, when he passed through valleys far higher than the summit of Mont Blanc. At these enormous altitudes the mere act of breathing became a matter of such difficulty that on this one .trip four of his companions died simply because they were unable to breathe. When they came to their camping-ground one evening two were found stark dead on their camels. The others "died gradually, from their feet upwards, retaining their senses to the end."

... "The experience,", he writes, "was weird and awful, and certainly the worst I have ever had. I was not affected to the same degree; but I was quite unable to marcli, and had to remain immovable in the saddle all day. Even to unbutton one's coat meant acute pain and tension to an overwrought heart, which literally was at the point of breaking. ~ ~ During the whole of this one journey of a thousand miles ley gales blew in our faces the whole way."

One would like to dwell on the bravery of the heroes who have faced the waterless deserts of inner Australia, that NeverNever Land of granite, spinifex, salt lakes, and mirage; to picture the trials of 'Jtob explorers who have followed the endless monotony of the bush paths which wind through the heart of Africa's vast forests; to touch on the enormous difficulties faced and overcome by those who first mapped out the gigantic watersheds of the Amazon and the Orinoco. But space does not. permit, and one may fitly close a paper of this kind with a brief description of the dangers braved by Mr. G. C. Curtis, the first man who reached the summit of Mount Pelee after its terrific eruption. In tne muse of science this man actually descended into the crater, although at the time it was still in a state of active eruption. Mist, rain, steam, and dust made an atmosphere through which it was impossible to sees more than a few yards but other senses than that of sight gave warning of the surrounding perils. The atmosphere reeked of sulphur, so that breathing was al-most-impossible. Constant crashes like the firing of heavy cannon proceeded from the depths in front, while at frequent intervals masses of ejected rock fell close and rolled clattering and clinking back down the precipitous slopes. One explosion was so close that the heat scorched the face of the bold observer. It was during their return that lie and his companions had their narrowest escape. A great mass of blackish liquid mud was" suddenly ejected and went rushing down a ravine immediately in front of the party. Crested with huge boulders, this ten-foot wall of mingled earth and water went hurtling down the mountainside, cutting away the rocks as though they had been paper. The roar was absolutely deafening and the ground shook so continuously that Mr. Curtis was barely able to keep his feet. A few yards farther on and "they must have been overwhelmed. It was a stroke of good fortune that saved the explorers from a sudden and appalling end. X. C. Bridges, in Chambers'. Journal.