SHINING BRAINS

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXIX, Issue 20054, 11 March 1935, Page 3

SHINING BRAINS

RADIATION TESTS A visible demonstration that light emanates from the brains of animals, or, as the demonstrator, Dr. George W. Crile, said, that the “sun shines again in the ’ protoplasm of animals,” was given in a laboratory of the Cleveland (Ohio) Clinic (says the New York correspondent of the “London Times”). In the pitch darkness of the room brain tissue was seen to give forth a faint greenish glow, which grew stronger after a little time. When a flask containing the tissue was shaken the tissue became more luminous still. In Dr. Crile’s view the experiments which he and a group of assistants have been making prove that the energy of animals is supplied by re-radia-tion of solar energy ingested in their plant food. Through the use of delicate instruments devised by some of his assistants —including a galvanometer capable of measuring one quadrillonth of an ampere—he had established that radiations are produced in protoplasm in different wave lengths. According to Dr. Telkes, one of Dr. Crile’s collaborators, the type of radiation emitted by the brain tissue in a recent demonstration includes, in addition to visible light, infra-red radiations of a range from 8000 to 12,000 Angstrom units. (An Angstrom unit is one-hundred-millionth of a centimetre.) The tissue likewise gives off shorter radiations in the range of the ultraviolet. By the addition of various chemicals the luminescence of the tissue shown was increased or decreased at will. Thus there was given an insight into the action of certain drugs on the human system. All drugs that decreased radiation or stopped it altogether are physiologically poisonous. The decrease of radiation produced by anaesthetics is taken to indicate that certain radiations of infra-red or ultraviolet type are necessary for the existence of a state of consciousness. Alcohol in small amounts increased radiation, but in large amounts it decreased it. Thryoxin from tyroid gland and adrenalin from the adrenals increased radiation. A study of 1000 animals, Dr. Crile said, had fully justified the assumption about the size of their thyroid and adrenal glands from the character of their behaviour. Thus, where there was need for a quick use of energy, as in the lion and tiger, the adrenal sympathetic system was most complex; the thyroid gland was larger than the adrenal glands in animals such as man, where there is a* demand for sustained energy over long periods of time. Both the thyroid and adrenal glands were small in animals of sluggish habit, such as the alligator and crocodile.