Science: Chemists at New Orleans

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Only 275 of the more than 19,000 members of the American Chemical Society are out of work, President Laurence V. Redman assured that body when it met in New Orleans last week. The ratio of one unemployed out of 70 seemed to him an excellent professional record. On the other hand Industrial & Engineering Chemistry, published by the Society, in the issue which printed the convention program, carried seven want-ad offers of situations against 65 applications by members—nine chemists for every offered job. Dr. Redman thinks the Depression beneficial. Said he: "When business is good, research is hampered and all hands are engaged in turning out materials. Yet the only way man ever made quick money was through research. Depression in southern Europe in the 15th Century caused the chartering of Columbus' expedition. . . ." As usufructs of Depression he counted cellophane, colored metals, non-rusting metals, cancer investigations. The harvest also included: Selenium for Cancer? Years ago investigators tried selenium as a treatment for cancer. It destroyed cancers and the people who had them, was discarded. At the University of Illinois Professor Rosalie Mary Parr* mixed sodium selenite, calcium germanate, sodium chloride (table salt) and 1,000 parts of water. Dr. Clarence Sylvester Bucher, physician & surgeon, injected the solution into the muscles of several persons having cancers and then exposed the patients to x-rays. Dr. Ruth Scovell Funk, bacteriologist, studied the tissues. The cancers seemed to heal. Supposition is that the selenium atoms acted as reflectors of x-rays, thus giving cancer cells a double bombardment of direct and indirect rays. (In London last week Sir Arthur Keith, great anthropologist and surgeon, qualified a report that a young doctor researching on the roof of the Royal College of Surgeons had found a cure for cancer. Said Sir Arthur: "The truth is, the young experimenter has got hold of something big toward the control of its growth. It is true that he is working with a parathyroid extract. It means that in his experiments on animals he can develop or retard growth as he wishes. But whether this discovery will ultimately lead to control of malignant growth remains to be seen.") Slow Anesthetic, Two Cincinnatians, Theodore Harold Rider and Eugene Wiley Scott, presented a new local anesthetic which they claim is stronger than novocaine or cocaine and can replace those drugs. It is not habit-forming, its effect wears off slowly. The patient is "more comfortable after operation than is usually the case." The anesthetic's full name is hydrochloride of piperidinopropanediol diphenylurethane, abbreviated to diothane. Castor Oil Detoxifyer. Castor oil contains a specific poison called ricin, analogous to the toxins of certain bacteria. By treating sodium ricinoleate, a derivative of castor oil, Dr. Rider obtained a substance called soricin which counteracts the ill effects of the toxins of diphtheria and lockjaw. It also cancels the poisons of snake venom. Soricin, Dr. Rider thinks, may have value in immunization.