Word: serums
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...weaving perfect webs of traditional pattern. Dr. Bercel then gives it no food for a day. In the evening he offers it a doctored fly-one that he has killed without damaging its form and from which he has drained the blood. He replaces this with human blood serum taken from schizophrenic patients. Since the dead fly does not buzz or struggle, Dr. Bercel fools the spider into thinking that it is alive by twanging a tuning fork (middle C) near the web. The spider runs out, sinks its fangs into the fly and greedily sucks up its content...
Early morning is web-building time, so when Dr. Bercel opens the air-conditioned room the next day, he can tell at a glance how the spiders reacted to their meals. Most striking results so far have been seen in spiders fed with serum taken from patients suffering from the catatonic form of schizophrenia. The spiders seem to become catatonic too. They move listlessly and spend much time in their houses; the webs they spin are like the last vestiges of ragged lace. The spiders' reaction, like that of human volunteers injected with schizophrenic serum (TIME, May 14), shows...
Other kinds of schizophrenic serum produce effects on the webs that are not so obvious. Dr. Bercel's next step: to feed spiders on serum from former schizophrenic patients, now considered cured, to see whether the cure will extend to his spiders, leave them spinning perfect webs...
Dozens of chemically complex enzymes serve the body as catalysts, usually in minute quantities. In disease, the relative concentration of some enzymes increases. After a heart attack, Dr. Wróblewski points out, there is a rise in several enzymes, including serum glutamic oxaloacetic transaminase (SGO-T) and lactic dehydrogenase (SLD). Liver diseases cause release into the blood of SGO-T and glutamic-pyruvic transaminase (SGP-T). Careful and repeated measuring of several enzymes can pinpoint disease in a particular organ. Examples: a high level of SGO-T, without elevation in SGP-T, gave an index of President Eisenhower...
...Truth Serum. In Pittsburgh, Motorist Francis Weiss admitted that he had downed "five or six cocktails," was acquitted of drunken driving after flabbergasted Judge Robert E. McCreary observed it was "only the second time I've heard a defendant admit to having more than a couple of beers...