Medicine: Little Old Child

For three of his four years Paul Banks has fascinated pediatricians at the St.

Louis Children’s Hospital. Paul is a cheerful little Negro boy with an I.Q. of 107 and a physical age of 70. His skin is wrinkled, he is nearly bald. Thick veins snake across his temples and the backs of his hands. His fingernails are dry and broken.

Paul is senescent. He is also very undersized (32½ in. high) and underweight (21½ lb. — about the size of a one-year-old child).

Soon after Paul was born, his father (Dining-car Steward Charles Banks) & mother noticed that he was different from their other three children. He was as wrinkled as an old man. When Paul began to lose weight, they took him to the hospital. The doctors diagnosed his disease as progeria, the fourth recorded case in the U.S.

Progeria is a kind of dwarfism, probably caused by an abnormality in the front part of the pituitary gland where the growth hormone originates. Doctors think that progeria may be an exaggerated form of ordinary pituitary dwarfism, which merely makes people small without making them senescent. There is no known treatment for the disease, but the doctors are keeping Paul as healthy as possible with vitamins and glandular extracts.

Last week the diminutive, old-man-like boy was exhibited at a St. Louis symposium on degenerative diseases. Paul showed no fear or shyness, because he knows the doctors well. Newspapermen took Paul’s picture, were surprised to learn that he likes toys, wants a big cake on his birthday in the middle of April.