Medicine: Eyes Ripped

Searching for the origin of cataracts on the human eye, Dr. John M. Wheeler of New York University Medical School, like the British physiologists who plucked the eyes from unborn chicks and found that they grew in “a surprisingly natural way” (TIME, Oct. 4), ripped bits of living tissue from the eyes of chicken embryos. These bits he placed in hollow glass slides and kept in incubators. Every 48 hours the detached tissue cells reproduced themselves, proving as Dr. Alexis Carrel has been doing for almost 15 years with his chicken-heart tissue (TIME, Nov. 30, 1925), that cell life can be maintained immortal apart from the parent body. They must, of course, be kept at proper temperature, be given proper nutrition, be kept from bacteria and have the products of their metabolism drained away.