Word: thymuses
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...experiment designed for studying the effects of the thymus gland on immune mechanisms and the "take" of grafts, eleven of 18 U.S. children, aged 31 months to 18 years, had their thymuses cut out while they were undergoing heart surgery. For comparison, the seven others were spared the thymus operation. Only occasionally is thymectomy done in connection with heart surgery, and in any case, "its eventual effects in children are not known." The experiment yielded only a negative result: there was no difference between the groups in the take of skin grafts...
...chance. After he fled Hungary's Communist control in 1947, he was able to resume at Woods Hole his long work on muscle. Concentrating on one of the commonest of muscular diseases, myasthenia gravis, he had a clue. Sometimes a victim of "MG" does better after his thymus gland is removed. Searching for the explanation, Szent-Gyorgyi, who has a Cambridge Ph.D. in biochemistry besides his M.D., spent years doing delicate chemical dissections of the thymus glands of calves, supplied by Chicago's Armour & Co. The trail ran out. Szent-Gyorgyi had found nothing of value...
...Shumway's dogs. Other surgeons have long since demonstrated how many more supposedly vital parts the body can do without. Thanks largely to medicinal hormones that replace its own supply, the body can function adequately without: the master pituitary gland in the brain, both adrenals, the thyroid, the thymus, spleen, pancreas, gall bladder, one hemisphere of the brain, the gullet, much of the stomach, anywhere from a few inches to several feet of small bowel, the colon, rectum, one lung, one kidney, one testicle, one ovary, one breast, the prostate gland...
...University of Colorado team headed by Dr. William R. Waddell also takes out both diseased kidneys first. But the Denver surgeons go farther: they remove the recipient's thymus and spleen as well, on the theory that these glands are headquarters for rejection mechanisms. The Denver group has made seven non-twin transplants in five months, and guardedly reports that so far, all the recipients but one are doing well...
...three-month-old baby brother, also suffering from a swollen neck, fever, and a lump bigger than a golf ball at the base of his neck. The baby had apparently never been scratched by the family kitten, but Dr. Snyder concluded that the lump in his neck was his thymus gland, swollen by a cat-scratch infection that had probably penetrated the skin through a rash. The baby got better after penicillin treatment...