Evening star., 1939-05-15

prolonged for 81 days the life of a
rat with a malignant tumor. Path
ologists familiar with the progress Of
this particular neoplasm had given
the animal limit of eight weeks to
live. In a few cases complete cures
seemed to have been accomplished,
although with complication which
eventually killed the animals.
While no application to human
cancer was suggested, the fact was
pointed out that fatalities from can
Ger seldom are the result of the pri-
mary growth but of the metastases,
or spreading of the cancer tissue
through the blood and lymph, to
vital organs such as the lungs or
liver.
Drs. John R. Murlin, c. D. Kocha-
khan, T. B. Steinhausen and r. Ryer
of the University of Rochester told
of experiments with neoplasms i'm
planted into rabbits. On the pri-
mary cancer they could detect no
difference between animals treated
with insulin and their controls. The
animals given the pancreas hormone,
however, developed smaller and few
branch growths and lived appre-
ciably longer.
Accidental Discovery.
The suggestion of this use of in
sulin in cancer treatment came, Gu
riously enough, from efforts to ex-
plain the effects of the hormone in
far different malady-the wide
spread mental disease, dementia
precox. During the past two years
it has been demonstrated that heavy
doses of insulin. sufficient to cause
convulsions, result in temporary and
sometimes permanent cures of this
terrible disease. The treatment still
is almost entirely impirical. No.
body knows exactly what the insulin
does to the disordered brain. Among
the suggestions is that it alters the
oxidation of the brain cells.
Too much insulin. it was stressed
in the report of DR.. Lee and his
associates. Drs. William Freeman,
r. G. Hoskins and Helen M. Levene,
seems to kill certain rat cancers so
quickly that the animal Is killed
by the poisons let loose by the dead
cells. Too little insulin has no ef-
feet at all. The problem now, so
far as rats are concerned, is to
strike happy medium where the
cancer is killed slowly enough to
prevent the rapid piling up of
fatal toxic processes and at the
same time quickly enough to pre-
vent the fatal metastases into the
vital organs. A possibility not yet
tried, they said, was to drain off
the poisonous products of cancer
death as they were produced.
All those reporting on the ex-
periments stressed that they were
claiming nothing so far as human
cancer was concerned.
Birth Statistics Studied.
The stork brings babies from the
North Pole. At least their arrival
In the central United States seems
somehow closely associated with the
great masses of Arctic air, the So
called polar infalls," which come
down over the continent, according
to an exhibit set up for the asso-
citation by DR.. Roy B. Bodeker of
st. Louis University.
This is shown from the statistics
OF more than $4,000 births in the
st. Louis area. Within the past few
years it has been established that a
dominant factor in American
weather is the conflict of such
masses in the high atmosphere and
the tropical fronts, masses of warm
air from the south Meteorological
changes take place at the functions
OF these fronts:
DR.. Boedeker'S studies show that
there is baby weather" With every
polar front passing over a city, he
SHOWS, there Is an increase in the
number OF births A tropical front
Is followed by a decrease. In the
summer, he shows, the birth rate
generally follows the temperature
curve. while in the winter it follows
the curve of barometric pressure.
The reasons for this phenomenon
are entirely unknown, except that
the human being is a creature of the
elements in some inexplicable way.
The influence on births seems to be
quite fundamental. This is shown.
DR.. Boedeker said, by efforts to bring
about labor in delayed birth cases
in st, Louis hospitals. There are
various means of doing this but all
OF them. the exhibit showed, work
better in the presence of a polar
infall."
A clear relic of the fish stage of
evolution, remaining as a bother
some vestige in the human organ
ism, was shown in another exhibit
prepared by Dorothy Woolf of
Washington University. All fishes
have sense organ unknown to man
or any of the mammals-the So
called lateral line" organ. It's
junction Is to detect very minute
vibrations in the water. It forms
part of the general touch hearing
sight complex served by the cranial
nerves, the development of which
has been largely instrumental in
the development of the brain.
When the first amphibians
emerged on dry land they had to
develop a finer sense to detect the
vibrations of the air.
But, the exhibit showed, even in
the countless millions of generations
OF vertebrate life on dry land it
has not been possible entirely to get
rid OF some of the nerve connections
serving this discarded sense.
One result of this, Miss Woolf
showed, is that earaches frequently
come with intestinal upsets.
A treatment Of cancer by throwing
the malignant cells into hiberna-