Medicine: Physicians in Montreal

The American College of Physicians at Montreal last week intended to talk extensively about the patients as persons, rather than as collections of symptoms and ills. That intention did not eventuate. As usual the physicians talked about specific diseases and ways of curing them. Discussed were:

Hot Cure. Radio waves and hot air are curing arthritis, syphilis, gonococcal infections and certain blood-vessel diseases of the hands and feet at Dayton’s Miami Valley Hospital. The patient lies in an insulated chamber, his head, however, protruding. In the chamber’s side walls are large condenser plates which, like the aerials of radio systems, send a 30-metre high frequency wave through the patient.* In 30 minutes his temperature rises to 105° or 106° F. He sweats, germs within him begin to die, injured tissues and nerves begin to heal. Profuse sweating weakens the patient. He feels nauseous, vomits, has cramps, twitches. Attendants stop all this by giving the patient plenty of salty water. The sweating causes another inconvenience. The healing radio waves collect in the sweat droplets, scald the patient. General Motors’ Engineer Charles Franklin Kettering who bought the radiotherm from General Electric (whose Chemist Willis Rodney Whitney built it after accidental discovery that short radio waves cause fever), figured that a draft of dry, hot air would evaporate the sweat, cool the uncomfortable patient. Mr. Kettering invented a successful blaster, using air almost hot enough to make water boil.

The Miami Valley Hospital workers were Dr. Walter Malcolm Simpson (president of the American Society of Clinical Pathologists), Dr. Frederick Karl Kislig (syphilologist) and Edwin C. Sittler (one of Mr. Kettering’s men). Paul de Kruif. writing bacteriologist, originally gave them the idea of using the radiotherm to treat syphilis. He thought the precisely regulated fevers it generates would be better than the malaria-induced fevers used by Nobel Laureate J. Wagner Jauregg.

All went well with the Dayton work until last December when the blaster, for lack of an automatic disconnecter, set the whole device afire. No patient was in the hot box at the time. Within a week the group had complete new equipment, proceeded with more treatments. Last week another disaster occurred. As Dr. Simpson in Montreal prepared to read a report, his collaborator, Dr. Kislig, died in Dayton. Autopsy showed progressive heart failure following influenza. Dr. Simpson caught a train, left the paper for another to read. Radiotherm treatments at Dayton will continue.

Depressed Leacock. Professor Stephen Butler Leacock, McGill’s witty economist, intended to devote all his income to cancer research when Mrs. Leacock died of cancer. Commented he at the Physicians’ meeting: “Subsidize cancer research? Why I couldn’t subsidize a pony cart today. . . . That was two years ago. .. . You’ve heard of the Depression, haven’t you? . . . No, I haven’t any money for research.”

Women Doctors. “About 5% of the entire medical profession in the U. S. are women. No college is allowed to accept more than 5% of women. Most women in medicine specialize in women’s diseases, in pediatrics, or in obstetrics.”—Manhattan’s Dr. Louise Doddridge Larimere.

Brain Energy. Little known facts about brains pointed out by Harvard’s Stanley Cobb: the brain of a sedentary brain-worker uses up more energy when he works than do his legs when he exercises outdoors; blood flows through the brain arteries faster than through any part of the body except the eye retina; the pressure of cerebrospinal fluid on the brain is five or six times greater when a man lies prone than when he stands upright; “it seems probable that the brain has a rather high metabolism when compared to other organs or to the body as a whole.”

* Diathermy, another electrical (300-metre high-frequency) way of raising body temperature, primarily heats parts of the body.

Radiothermy, more pervasive, heats the entire body at once.