SCIENCE SIFTINGS

New Zealand Tablet, Volume L, Issue 41, 18 October 1923, Page 54

SCIENCE SIFTINGS

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New White Metal. ' '"• '__•'•■ '" '■'* '■' ; SV*7 ... Following the discovery of a non-tarnishable silver ; '-? comes the news of a white metal which resists both tarnish and corrosion, ' and has a remarkably deep and- brilliant 'iL lustre when polished. • '-"wpThe day appears to have come when the chemist, by i skilfully alloying his metals, can make , them resist 'the ravages of impure air produced by modern industrial conditions. The new white metal, which, it is stated, can be v produced at a price, within everybody's reach, has good casting qualities and is both malleable and ductile. While not entirely unaffected by the atmosphere, the alloy should lessen the work of the housewife when employed in cutlery, and it may have important uses in engineering.

Wonders of Insulin: ..A Canadian Doctor's Remarkable . Discovery. Ever since medical records began to be kept, there have been written interminable histories of one disease in particular, affecting most frequently the flower of the race, the treatment of which has baffled successive generations of medical men.

Pathetic and hopeless in the extreme were those cases of young people, mostly between twenty and thirty years of age, who found themselves losing weight, becoming weaker day by day, their skin becoming harsh and dry, their tongues either black or raw and glazed, Their bodies tormented by carbuncles or crops of boils, their mouths parched with unquenchable thirst. Early death was their inevitable doom. Such was for centuries the course of diabetes.

Inspired by a determination to make ..an end of this apparently unlimited succession of human misery, a young Toronto doctor got to work on a faint clue to the cure of this devastating disease. He made the Physiological Laboratory of the University of Toronto, with its wealth of scientific equipment, his headquarters', following up the clue with that youthful zeal which, tempered with scientific caution, accomplishes great things.

But there were formidable technical difficulties to be overcome. It had long been known that the cause of the excess of sugar in the blood (the essential feature of diabetes) was failure on the part-of the pancreas, a large abdominal gland, to produce a sugar-storing juice, which prevents the blood from being flooded with sugar. This failure was caused by destruction of the pancreatic cells which should produce this juice. The obvious thing to do then was to obtain -the pancreatic juice of, say, a sheep, and use that as a "substitute.

The Toronto scientist attempted to prepare extracts of sugar-storing juice from the sweetbreads of sheep and other animals. These extracts had to be made from certain little groups of cells, known as "islands," in the sweetbreads. But unfortunately these extracts were alwaye destroyed by the digestive juices produced by other portions of the sweetbread.

Nothing daunted, our determined discoverer found that the active extract of which he was in quest could be obtained from the sweetbreads of very young animals, before the cells had started producing the juices which had always previously destroyed it. ~ '""" ;

With this extract the doctor treated one patient after another, and was at last able to demonstrate that, given by injection after every meal containing sugar or starch, the sugar in the blood was reduced almost to normal, the* other symptoms* abated, and recovery was speeded up. He"" had robbed a dread disease of all its terrors , v,v , v .. The technical difficulties of manufacturing this almost ~ magical remedy on a large scale have now been overcome, and the product of entirely British manufacture is to-day available. for distribution, and can be easily obtained by medical men. : : . ; . ■- . j"".,- ' Since, however, the remedy is a very potent one, and can be administered only by subcutaneous injection, considerable caution in its use is necessary, and control bloodsugar tests are desirable during the treatment. f~T > -