Word: stern
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Around the Filter. For a long time, Dr. Stern worried over a basic medical problem: why is it that certain medicines and serums injected into the blood stream do not get through to the brain nerve centers? Intravenous injections of anti-tetanus serum, for example, fail to check tetanus once the poison gets into the central nervous system. Dr. Stern decided that there must be a barrier (a filtering membrane), developed to protect the nerves and spinal fluid from harmful substances and most germs. She called this block the "hematoencephalic barrier...
...around the barrier, thought Dr. Stern, why not inject medicines directly into the nerve centers in the brain? She first tried this dangerous experiment on dogs, got some astonishing results. Calcium solutions, injected into the blood stream in large doses, act as stimulants. When Dr. Stern injected a few drops of a calcium salt solution into a dog's brain, the effect was exactly opposite to the one expected: instead of being stimulated, the dog tottered, collapsed, in a few minutes fell fast asleep. When she injected potassium phosphate, the dog had a case of frenzied jitters...
Into the Nerves. Might a brain injection of this solution revive a dying patient with low blood pressure, weak pulse and feeble breathing? During World War II, Dr. Stern gave brain injections to shock victims given up for dead. The treatment was a dramatic success: of the first 383 "hopeless" cases, 302 recovered. By war's end, the treatment was standard in many Soviet hospitals...
...Stern proceeded to try brain injections (of vitamins, sedatives, medicines, etc.) for many other ailments, got good results against tetanus, ulcers, skin diseases, inflammation of the brain, insanity...
...Gale, the newly appointed Military Governor of Tel Aviv, said the main objective of the marital law decree was to "paralyze and eradicate" the Stern Gang and Irgun Zvai Leumi, Jewish underground resistance groups...