Pioneers in Poison

Two of the world's greatest experts on poisons were given honorary degrees in medicine last week at Connecticut State Medical Society's sesquicentennial celebration. The toxicologists: Dr. Alice Hamilton, 73, industrial expert and first woman professor at Harvard; Physiologist Yandell Henderson, 69, of Yale, inventor of the modern gas mask.

For 30 years Alice Hamilton has studied the ill effects of industrial poisons (lead in the paint trades, toluene in TNT plants, carbon monoxide in steel mills, benzol in airplane "dopes"), in 1924 published a modern classic, Industrial Poisons in the U.S. She also engaged in many a bitter fight to force her scientific findings on an indifferent public.

Today Alice Hamilton looks back with satisfaction over the vast progress of the last 30 years. Clinical knowledge, new protective devices and a feeling of social responsibility among employers have greatly reduced industrial poisoning, she says.

O₂ v. CO₂. Tousled, belligerent Yandell Henderson has concentrated on poison gases, of war and peace. During World War I, Professor Henderson (with his assistant, Howard Haggard) invented a gas mask, but his greatest scientific work is his research on respiration. Physiologists long believed that asphyxiation was caused by lack of oxygen plus an accumulation of "poisonous" carbon dioxide in the body. The old method of resuscitation was to pump pure oxygen into lungs. But this method was seldom successful. Professor Henderson proved that carbon dioxide in small amounts is really an essential breathing stimulant, introduced an O₂-CO ₂ mixture which is used today in all hospitals, saves an estimated 25,000 newborn babies every year.

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