Word: methodic
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...years ago, cancer was detected by the crude method of waiting for an obvious malignancy to appear. Then Dr. George Papanicolaou of Cornell University Medical College devised his revolutionary method of early detection: smearing body secretions on glass slides for microscopic study of cells. In thousands of doctors' offices, the now standard Papanicolaou technique is to stain cells with polychrome dyes. Seen in the visible spectrum of light, the dyes readily emphasize the structure of malignant cells...
Last week an important speedup of this fast detection method was reported to a meeting of the International Academy of Pathology in Boston. Developed at Washington's Walter Reed Army Hospital, by Captain Leroy H. Dart Jr. and Master Sergeant Thomas R. Turner, the new wrinkle rests on facts about the cell's nucleic acids that were unknown in 1943. Biochemists are now sure that deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) generally increases in human cancer cells; they suspect that ribonucleic acid (RNA) also rises. If the nucleic acid can be spotted under a microscope, it should be a tipoff...
...cervical and vaginal smears with acridine orange, they detected 171 "suspicious" cases compared to 156 in a retest by the Papanicolaou technique. When they later did biopsies on nine of the 15 Papanicolaou "negatives," they found cancer in seven cases. This does not necessarily mean that the new method is more accurate. But it can definitely speed up cancer screening. At Walter Reed, cell-smear staining with acridine orange now takes twelve minutes, against half an hour with the Papanicolaou technique...
Present sections are noble in principle and inadequate in practice. If there were a nucleus of discussion at the meetings, instead of desultory questions or a third lecture by the section man, actuality might approach potential. One method of stimulating discussion might be effected by requiring concise, one-page papers throughout the term on questions suggested by the week's readings. One of the term's longer papers might be dropped and a requirement of six to eight short expositions substituted. Students could hand these in on weeks when they chose. Exercises like this would eliminate the need...
...there are some marvellous things in the new book. The title story, about a frumpy lady chimney sweep who is turned into a "beautiful, glamorous movie star," covers familiar ground wtih unfamiliar dexterity; if we must have more jokes about Method acting, let us by all means have Mr. Feiffer's image of "The Inner Me Acting Academy." His ear for catch phrases and talent for parodying them are as precise and effective as ever; in the story entitled "Boom!" he reproduces a dialogue of two generals discussing their progress: "This is last year's bomb. We thought...