Necrobiotic Rays

Three investigators, widely separated, last week reported on an invisible light ray which seems to be the intimate tool of death.

At the Smithsonian Institution Dr. Florence E. Meier fired ultraviolet light waves of various lengths at green, one-celled plants called algae. The algae succumbed to waves which were almost as short as x-rays.

At the University of California Professor W. W. Lepeschkin took living yeast cells into a pitch dark room and killed them. In dying they gave off a short, x-ray-like radiation which affected some silver bromide (ray-testing compound) in the room.

At the University of Pennsylvania Dr. Ellice McDonald, oncologist, and Dr. Alexander John Allen, physicist, are trying to strike germs and cancer cells dead with these short rays by producing them in body recesses by means of injections of certain chemical solutions. When x-rays activate these solutions, the chemicals throw the short ultraviolet darts into the nuclei of the cells, which thereupon perish.

Professor Lepeschkin suggested these wands of death be called necrobiotic rays.

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