Medicine: Scientist's Scientist

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Once Dr. Carlson starved himself for five days, another time for ten. He was weak at the end of the fast, but as soon as he took food again his weakness and mental depression disappeared. By the second day Dr. Carlson felt as though he had enjoyed "a month's vacation in the mountains." His mind was "unusually clear," and he did more work without fatigue. "Occasional periods of starvation," he concluded, "say once or twice a year, in the case of healthy adult persons, may not only add to the joy of living, but also to the length of life." In an age and a science notable for specialization, Dr. Carlson has been notable for versatility. He has dug into such diverse subjects as liver function, vitamin E, the relation between thyroid and ovaries, effect of protein digestion on the sex of rats, the bactericidal action of ozone.

But probably his most important contribution to biology has been as a strategist of biological campaigns. His caustic question: "Vot iss de effidence?" has launched a thousand experiments. Many of his pupils and onetime pupils have notable discoveries to their credit. North western University's top-flight Physiologist Andrew Conway Ivy, a pupil of Dr. Carlson's, who is working on gastric ulcers, frequently consults Dr. Carlson when he has a new lead. Dr. Ivy is also in charge of the parachute experiments sponsored by Northwestern. Sidney Smith,* one of Dr. Carlson's medical students, last year developed, under Dr. Carlson's guidance, a new technique for stitching together torn blood vessels (TIME, June 10).

Ajax, the Teacher. For years to come, the University of Chicago campus will echo with stories in Swedish dialect:

> Once when he saw a girl with an electric wire trying to stimulate a frog muscle that was sodden with salt solution, Ajax barked: "You might as veil try to stick your electrodes in the ocean and stimulate Ireland."

>Another time he had two beakers of liquid before him: one containing urine, the other, sugar solution. He stuck his finger in one of the containers, tasted it and said: "Ya, dot's sugar."

When lecturing, Ajax holds his hands behind his back, charges across the platform in bull-like rushes. Suddenly he may stop short, wave his arms, thrust out his jaw, fix a quivering freshman with his hard blue eyes. Frequently his lectures start as dramatically as a murder mystery. He has himself wheeled into class on an operating table, while white-coated assistants draw blood from his veins.

Since 1909, there are few national or international conventions of physiologists which Ajax has not attended. He boasts that he has never fallen asleep at a scientific meeting — not because what he hears is always stimulating, but because he fears that his colleagues might put something over on the world if he nodded. He considers himself a watchdog of the sciences. At such meetings he is still the truculent, aggressive shepherd lad who kicked the rams around in a Swedish pasture. Whenever he thinks a theory has been presented without sufficient evidence, he leaps to his feet and pitches into the unlucky author without mercy. Most of his colleagues have a respect for him that verges on awe.