Discoveries Reported

Dr. Rene Jules Dubos of the Rockefeller Institute may possibly some day take rank, along with Gerhard Domagk of Germany and other pioneers who gave the world sulfanilamide. as a great benefactor of chemotherapeutical medicine. Starting with a hunch that there must be agents in the soil capable of breaking up almost anything organic, piling up experiments year after year. Dr. Dubos recently told how he isolated from soil bacilli a substance called "gramicidin," which--in experimental animals--kills pneumococci of five kinds, streptococci, diphtheria bacilli, and other "gram-positive" (blue-staining) germs, possibly including the tubercle bacillus (TIME, April 15).

Others were quick to follow his lead. Last week Drs. Salman A. Waksman and H. Boyd Woodruff reported discovery of agents from soil which kill "gram-negative" (red-staining) germs--such as those of typhoid fever, dysentery and cholera. But scientists are going ahead cautiously. The protective value of both "gram-positive" and "gram-negative" destroyers has yet to be tried on human beings.

Drs. Waksman and Woodruff announced their discovery in Washington, at a meeting of the National Academy of Sciences. Other highlights:

Water for Cancer. X-rays wreak their destruction on cancer cells more effectively if water is injected into the tumor. For that reason, and because of new experiments with synthetic radioactive substances in solution, doctors would like to have a good method of injecting liquids. Hypodermic needles have not been entirely satisfactory. Dr. Gioacchino Failla, physicist of New York City's Memorial Hospital, announced a new method of getting fluids into cancers located near the body surface. The fluid is shot in a tiny, powerful jet from a diamond (to prevent rapid wearing away) orifice two-thousandths of an inch in diameter, at a pressure of 15,000 lb. per sq. in. Such a jet penetrates the skin, enters the flesh and spreads to a depth of nearly an inch.*

"Supercharger." Glycogen, a form of starch manufactured in the liver, is the substance which the body uses for quick energy. When glycogen is consumed, lactic acid is produced--mostly a waste product since a good part of it breaks down into carbon dioxide and water. But some lactic acid is reconverted into glycogen, which is then available for further energy release. Last week Dr. George Bogdan Kistiakowsky and five co-workers of Harvard compared this operation to that of a gasoline engine supercharger, which uses the energy of exhaust gases to pump air at high pressure into the firing cylinders. The scientists told how they followed the reconversion of lactic acid into glycogen by means of radioactive atoms ("tagged atoms") of carbon.

Lethal Silver. It has long been known that silver is a deadly killer of one-celled organisms, and silver has been widely used as a germicide. It used to be thought, how ever, that from 100,000 to 100,000,000 silver atoms were needed to kill a cell. Last week Physicist Alexander Goetz of Caltech described experiments showing that under favorable circumstances just one silver atom will kill a cell -- a feat roughly comparable to the killing of a dinosaur by a gnat.

Prizeman. Among the recipients of prizes and other honors awarded by the Academy was none other than forthright FBI Chief John Edgar Hoover, nemesis of kidnappers, hero of gangbusters, night club celebrity, target of Ogpu-frightened critics. Mr. Hoover got the Academy's Public Welfare Medal, for applying scientific methods to crime detection. Said he handsomely: "I accept this medal not for myself alone but also as a tribute to my associates. ..."

* For other light on cancer treatment, see p. 60.

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