Evening star., 1939-04-09

of the defects Of rubber and all its valu-
able qualities.
For a generation there was talk of
chemical milk with glass retorts in some
way replacing the udders of the COW.
But today no chemist Is very much in
terested in artificial milk. He is looking
ahead to building up structures of atoms
into something which will be more pal
atable, more digestible, more nourishing
than milk. He no longer seeks to emu
late the COW, but to be a better milk
maker. Gone is the day when he Won
ders if it will ever by possible for man
to make wood. He knows that he can
make building materials lighter and
stronger and more fre-resistant than
wood. He no longer seeks to put gaso-
line together in his laboratory. He is
aiming at better motor fuel, something
which Nature never has attained and
which does not now exist on earth.
That is the kind of tomorrow which
the members of the American Chemical
Society are building-a tomorrow in
Nature in the beginning will have been
destroyed, tomorrow of basic sub
stances which do not now exist. He is
not concerned primarily in replacing old
buildings, building more of them, dupli-
eating their architecture. He is con-
cerned with new buildings out of the
bricks of atoms and molecules in en-
oF ;oL,
new generations can have their biological
and economic dwelling.
This is not altogether a vision. AL
ready it is being abundantly realized.
But it is tough, sweaty bricklaying for
these thousands of serious visaged, very
busy men who assembled in Baltimore.
Search Natures Junk Shops.
They find good many Of their bricks
in junk-piles. This tomorrow will be
very cheaply built, so far as the chemists
are concerned. But like the bricklayers
of an apartment house, they have no
control over the prices when all the
mountains of financing charges are piled
on top of the costs of their materials and
their labors. Some of their most valu-
able brickpiles are constituted of ma
terials for which now there is hardly any
use the SCOT of trees fires of life
which clogs up its pores and must be
gotten rid of before the wood can be
transformed into silk dresses or the kind
of letter paper on which sub-debs write
their billet-doux, the watery residue of
milk. after all the cream and casein have
been extracted, the corn which a few
years ago farmers were burning instead
of cordwood to keep their houses warm.
1t will be tomorrow built very largely
of junk-this lovely tomorrow of the
chemists vision. But it will be the junk
of luxurious and wasteful age and of
spendthrift Nature. The building of
it is -eminently the job of the brains
in shirtsleeves, the mind-sweating chem
lists who are neither afraid nor ashamed
to wear overalls and carry laden hods
up steep ladders or down into the depths
of the earth.
In this tomorrow life will be longer
and happier. This will be due in part
to the advances of medical science But
at every step the physician, with much
less fancy for hod-carrying and brick
laying in his intellectual world, waits
upon the chemist It was chemist,
Paracelcus, who lifted medicine out of
the dark ages. It was another chemist,
Pasteur, who established the germ theory
of disease. Chemists within the last few
months almost, have discovered sultan
ilamide and sulfapyridine and placed
them in the hands of the doctors. Today
they are working feverishly along SIM
liar lines. No less than a dozen new
compounds which promise to be improve
ments on these two germ killers were
reported at Baltimore-one of the more
notable from the chemical laboratories
of Georgetown University. More and
more, even the physicians admit, nedi-
cine must wait upon chemistry-not
alone for remedies but for fundamental
understanding of the mechanisms of the
animal body.
| For years to come, physicians will be
prescribing some of the medicinal sub
stances first reported at this Baltimore
meeting. And for years to come they
will be learning some of the funda-
mentals Of tho mechanism of life which
the chemists Of the United States and
| Canada now are discovering for the f1rst