Word: crocus
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...rare cases, it can threaten life by depositing uric acid crystals in the kidneys or heart. Sufferers must avoid foods rich in purines-yeast, herring roe, sardines, asparagus, and many organ meats such as sweetbreads, liver, heart and kidneys. Other treatment: colchicine (an ancient remedy extracted from the autumn crocus), ACTH, phenylbutazone (a powerful but potentially dangerous drug). Another drug, probenecid, is no good for acute attacks and may actually aggravate them, but paradoxically is the best long-term treatment to keep the disease quiescent. Not yet curable, but now usually controllable...
Laughton is diffident with strangers, impatient with fools, and warmly loyal to his friends. Agnes Moorehead describes him as "a big bear with a big, pink, plush heart." His passion for flowers is so great that he will walk miles to see the spring's first crocus. In the gardens of Chapel Hill, N.C., he was so moved by the budding of narcissi and daffodils that he cried. Laughton's personal untidiness upsets some of his friends, but one of them, Actor Arthur Macrae, thinks it more deliberate than careless: "After all, Charles is a funny-looking sort...
Colchicine (from the autumn crocus, Colchicum autumnale) has long been prescribed in the treatment of gout. It attracted the attention of cancer researchers because it is poisonous to living cells, impairs their power to divide. Most cancer workers were disappointed with colchicine and soon dropped it. But Dr. Hans Lettré of the University of Heidelberg persisted. He extracted N-methyl-colchicamid, a substance which proved to be ten times as powerful as colchicine itself in preventing the riotous multiplication of cells (a characteristic of cancer growth...
Theatre Guild on the Air (Sun. 8:30 p.m., NBC). Autumn Crocus, starring Dorothy McGuire and Charles Boyer...