Science: Chemists

At Evanston, Ill., last week, the American Chemical Society Institute continued its expositions of chemistry’s newest discoveries and applications.

Wherefore. “Chemistry is a philosophy working in man’s mind, leading him to search for fundamental truth and in the end to power in world .affairs. Science knows no frontiers.”—Sir James C. Irvine, acting chancellor of St. Andrews University, Scotland.

Motor Gasoline. Dr. Gustave Egloff, research director of Universal Oil Products Co. of Chicago, declared that motorists could save 3,000,000,000 gallons of gasoline and this year $400,000,000 if motor vehicle makers made their motors for higher compression.

Idiosyncrasies. From an island in New York Harbor where the city’s refuse is burnt, a smoky stench pervades the neighborhood. It bothers some people of the city. They sicken peculiarly because, health officials have just declared, the proteins in the smoke are poisonous to them. Other communities whose refuse is burned, unwittingly suffer in a like manner. Some of their people are bound to have an idiosyncrasy for the smoke, just as other people are sickened by strawberries, bananas or tomatoes, by plant pollens, by cocain or morphine. Just why, scientists have not yet learned. It is impossible to measure the poison liberated by the various irritants. But by combining the technique of pharmacology, immunology and bacteriology and working from a chemical viewpoint, slow progress to discovery is being made, said former Dean Arthur I. Kendall of Northwestern University Medical School. Serums are proving useful.

Minerals for Diabetics. Analyzing insulin, whose active principle has not yet been isolated,* chemists find minute traces of cobalt and nickel, so some diabetics are now being experimentally fed with cobalt and nickel salts. Scientists coupled this observation with the known fact that soil qualities modify the characteristics of peoples through the plant life eaten directly or indirectly (through herbivorous animals). Example: In Switzerland where iodine is rare, goitre is common. Feeblemindedness and dwarfism are therefore frequent. The recommendation of Dean Jacob G. Lipman of the Rutgers College of Agriculture was that agriculturists go still further in seeking what proper elements their soil lacks and intelligently supply the deficiency in fertilizers.

* Of the hormones known to be secreted by the ductless glands thyroxin from the thyroid and epinephrin from the suprarenal have been reduced to purity.