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From 500 cc. of blood (about a pint) they were able to extract just a tenth of a teaspoonful of this far-from-pure substance, still unidentified (though they believe it to be a protein enzyme). They injected it into monkeys. The animals "developed a full-blown catatonic picture with waxy flexibility, looked dazed and out of contact, and would stare into distant corners of the room gesticulating and grimacing inappropriately so as to suggest that they might be hallucinating." The monkeys' brain waves became almost identical with those of severely schizophrenic patients. Was this the key to schizophrenia...
Since monkeys cannot talk, and schizophrenia is described in psychological terms dependent on patients' reporting, Heath and co-workers decided to take the next step and test the serum extract on human volunteers. Two were found at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. Carefully examined by psychiatrists, they showed no trace of latent mental illness. Given only the same tiny dose as a seven-pound monkey, the men developed similar symptoms within five minutes, reaching a peak after about half an hour...
Surprisingly, from the same extract, one got the symptoms of catatonia, with his mind retarded and blocked, while the other got a paranoid reaction with delusions and hallucinations. (The fact that different reactions can be provoked by the same substance in itself raises an intriguing psychiatric question: What causes one subject to become catatonic, another to become paranoid?) Within two hours the effect wore off, and the men have been normal since. Dr. Heath emphasized that his report on only two human cases was preliminary. But it was significant, and his substance will be tested as soon as possible...
...were withheld from the incinerators in order to provide the Nazis with perfect skulls for paperweights; the heads of dead Jewish Communist commissars were pickled for an anthropological collection of "subhumans"). Whereas the Russians' prime concern seemed to be confessions of self-guilt, the Germans tortured mainly to extract admissions of others' guilt. When justice finally caught up with an MVD man he usually went stoically to his death, but at Nürnberg many Gestapomen wept and whimpered...
...Calcutta's Dr. Sudhir Nath Sanyal reports a high degree of success in cutting down the birth rate by using metaxylohydroquinone an extract derived originally from the common Indian garden pea* (Pisum sativum), now synthesized in the laboratory. Taken by mouth, it cut the birth rate among 232 women by about two-thirds over a 15-month period, he reports. Some U.S. researchers scoffed at Dr. Sanyal's methods and results; others listened with interest because they consider him a careful, conscientious worker. The Indian government rated his findings worth a full-scale trial...