W.E.A.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23857, 11 July 1939, Page 12

W.E.A.

THE RAILWAY CLASS RECENT MEDICAL PROGRESS "Recent Progress in Medical Diagnosis and Treatment" was the'subject of a lecture given by Dr Muriel E. Bell, of the Otago Medical School, at the W.E.A. Railway Class on Sunday afternoon. Mr JV T. Paul, -president of the W.E.A. for Otago, opening the meeting, congratulated the Railway Class on the solid backing it had given 10 the work of adult'education, tie considered the work of the W.E.A. to be' one of the most valuable agencies for uninterrupted progress, Al w«' s there would-be problems to be.,Rolyea, and steady progress: depended on .education to meet those problems. Dr Bell. confined her.. comments chiefly' to'the progress,of the last two decades. After a few. introductory, remarks about the history of the search for insulin, she spoke of, its actual .discovery by Collip, Banting. Best, and Macleod, of Toronto University, early in the last decade, of the new era which was opehd up for diabetic patients throughout the world, and pi the many diabetics who were now living more .abundantly thanks to. • this discovery. The history of the discovery of the liver treatment of "pernicious anaemia (now no longer in quality., .only. In name) dated from purely academic researches/into the foodstuffs that would regenerate with the greatest speed the blood of anemic dogs The clinical trial of liver.'which had been most Potent'm curing the dogs, had been: successful with peinicious anaemia .patients. Dr Bell outlined the progress in exacting and concentrating -the active constituent of liver. The part .played in using med'cal students as subjects of experiment, for finding that two things were necessary one from the fbod. the other from the stomach, and that both were stored in the liver was- another step in the ducidation of the problem of this type of anaemia. The contributions of the chemist.to medical science, as. already dealt with by Professor E. G. Soper in the. series were stressed by the speaker from the medical point of view. The newer aesthetics, of which, there was now a choice, the antiseptics which killed germs in the blood, and which had made childbirth safer., and the. other diseases which had been found curable by the same group of antiseptics gave some idea of the weapons Xduced into medical in recent years. There were also the new stimulants which acted on that part of the brain which controlled" the breaking and new drugs which were synthesised to resemble, but whichi improved on those that occurred natui ally in plants and tissues. An Mustrat on was given of the methods by which the vitamins had been synthesised and which were now more easily available The speaker gave a word of warning that if citrus fruits, which were a source of vitamins, remained costly the tables might be turned and their place be taken by synthetic vitamin C at a cheaper rate. , • . ■ . The recent developments, in isolating the hormones was the next suhiect dealt with by Dr Bell. From the glands of internal secretion, such as the pitui-. tary and the sex glands, new medicines had been prepared, as yet costly,, but capable of inducing fertility, of initiating the secretion of milk, of developing the underdeveloped, and of preventing abortion. Given a few more years,,the chemist will have made these medicines much more available and less, costly. The contributions of the physicist in recent years, she said, had been along the lines of improving X-ray apparatus, microscopy, and also of making radioactive substances. The X-ray apparatus had lately been refined so that it could photograph in one plane only—it could even miss seeing a coin if it was not in the right plane! Thus by emphasising a particular plane, the apparatus would render visible a small cavity which otherwise might not have been seen. By collaboration with the chemist, the radiologist now also had. available chemical substances which would make the urinary apparatus, or the gall-bladder more easily visible. The electron-microscope , had recently been invented. The apparatus magnified to such an extent that the germ causing boils, a germ formerly visible as a mere point, could be seen enlarged to a diameter of nine feet. The atom, also, had not only been split but had been rendered visible! It was hoped that the cyclotron, capable r,t produc-. ing in large quantities the radioactive forms of the common elements, would be a useful weapon against cancer. The "iron lung" (or the wooden equivalent, as supplied generously by Lord Nuffield) for keeping up respiration over long periods was described, as also was the oxygen tart for relieving extreme distress in breaming. Thus, the speaker added, we were standing at the entrance to a new world, the kind of new world which had been opened up for us by Faraday when he tierformed his experiments with electricity and unconsciously had led us into the new era of wireless in which we lived. The results of these new weapons had scarcely been imagined as yet. It was obvious that the high cost of these newer forms of apparatus would imply greater centralisation for treatment in the future. This would have to be taken into consideration in planning the health services of the future. A number of questions were asked by the audience and answered by the speaker.