Word: insulin
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Diabetes is a disease of combustion. In diabetes, carbohydrates are rushed through the body without being digested, or warehoused in the liver. Involved in this condition are two glands: 1) the little islands of Langerhans in the pancreas, which secrete insulin, a hormone essential for carbohydrate digestion; 2) the anterior pituitary. Latest medical theory is that somehow the pituitary hormone, working overtime, stimulates the islands of Langerhans to febrile activity. First they pour forth enormous quantities of insulin; later their cells become exhausted, die from overwork...
Once diabetes has started, doctors can usually smother it with insulin injections...
Operation on the Mind. Schizophrenia, the kind of insanity characterized by withdrawal into a dream world, is the most widespread mental disease in the U. S. In recent years convulsions induced by insulin, metrazol, azoman and electric shock have improved many schizophrenics. Last week Dr. Edward Adam ("Streck") Strecker, a U. of Pa. psychiatric bigwig, described a new brain operation for schizophrenia. It is called pre-frontal leucotomy, involves drilling a small hole in the temple, inserting a narrow, flat-bladed instrument with which a fan-shaped cut is made in the brain lobes...
Such a system is now in effect at a great many other colleges. McGill has carried on extensive experiments on insulin through this means. The discovery of Vitamin C at the University of Wisconsin has financed further research there. Harvard would do well to follow suit. "Dedication of inventions to the public" sounds like a commendable civic move; actually the public would benefit more if Harvard should hold and lease out the patents on inventions made here...
...from both hyperthyroidism and diabetes. But the diseases need opposite treatments. Diabetics, who cannot make use of the sugars they already have, must be deprived of carbohydrates; hyperthyroids, who burn up their sugars too rapidly, must be stoked with a much larger supply of fuel. Diabetics need injections of insulin to convert their sugars to useful work, but for high-gear hyperthyroids, insulin may be fatal...