Wonder-Glow

Disappointed Death leaves a glow of grateful wonder in the faces of those whom doctors cure. Doctors, who love to behold that wonder-glow, expected to see its quintessence last week in Philadelphia where Dr. George Richards Minot of Boston was scheduled to lecture on pernicious anemia at the Inter-State Postgraduate Medical Assembly. Dr. Minot, a diabetic, would not have been alive to discover the liver treatment for pernicious anemia and therefore to win a Nobel Prize (TIME, Nov. 5), if Nobel Laureate Frederick Grant Banting had not discovered the insulin treatment for diabetics. But Dr. Minot did not go to Philadelphia last week. Instead, he unexpectedly sailed for Sweden where late next month he will receive his share of Nobel Prize money.

Not deprived of wonder-glow, however, were the doctors in Philadelphia. Dr. Moses Behrend, president of the Medical Society of the State of Pennsylvania, presented them a sample convalescent, anemic Marvin Goodman, 17, whose vastly enlarged spleen he had recently taken out.

The spleen, lying just under the lowest left rib, is a kind of junkman of the blood stream. It collects worn-out blood cells, breaks them up and sends the debris to the liver. Marvin Goodman's spleen, ten times oversize, destroyed his red blood cells with mad indiscrimination. As a result, he became anemic. His skin turned yellow, then green. His weight fell from 150 lb. to 90 lb. in six months. He obviously was dying of hemolytic jaundice.

Last week, fresh from the operating room and Death's disappointment, he shed his wan wonder-look upon the Philadelphia assembly. Surgeon Behrend showed moving pictures of the operation which relieved Marvin Goodman of his trouble some spleen.

Commented the boy's mother: "I guess we can only thank God."

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