Human Machine
Rossum's Universal Robots, patented by the Czech playwright Karel Capek, are no more curious and involuntary machines than genus homo as he is analyzed in the latest theories of Dr. George W. Crile, the great Cleveland surgeon.
Ernst Haeckel, Jacques Loeb, the "behaviorist" school of psychologists and many more have long preached materialistic determinism, but it re- mained for Dr. Crile to carry such doctrines to their logical conclusion and posit man as an electro-chemical mechanism, every cell of whose body (and he estimates that there are 28 trillions of them) is a minute wet battery with negative and positive poles.
As in Dr. Eve's " ana-katergy" theory (TIME, Aug. 27), all activity is the result of a difference ol potential. In the inorganic world the same difference exists, but the energy is always balanced, seeking a state of equilibrium. In man and other living things, energy is stored up, and the flow from positive to negative keeps going oxidation, movement and the other vital processes. The greater the difference in electrical potential, the greater energy the body possesses. Work spends it. Fatigue makes the difference less. Sleep restores it. With death the difference of potential vanishes. The brain cells have the most positive electricity, the liver cells the most negative. Emotions are stimuli releasing currents of electricity along certain paths.
These were some of the high lights of an address at the 13th annual convention of the American College of Surgeons, Orchestra Hall, Chicago. Dr. Crile said in conclusion: " Although the theory has stood the test of the surgical clinic, it is not yet proven and will not be proven until the equivalent of a living cell is constructed . . . artificially."
Dr. Crile is known the world over not only as a super-surgeon, but as an incisive and original thinker in biology and social psychology. He is a foremost specialist in surgery of the thyroid gland. He has devised methods of avoiding surgical shock by a combination of local and gen- eral anaesthetics (nitrous oxide and novocaine) which he calls " anoci-association." He studied in Ohio, Vienna, London, Paris, and has won more medical prizes than he can stagger under. During the War he was a Colonel in charge of a base hospital. In peace time he is a professor at Western Reserve University and Visiting Surgeon at the Lakeside Hospital, Cleveland. The titles of some of his books suggest the range of his interests: Origin and Nature of the Emotions; A Mechanistic View of War and Peace; Man, an Adaptive Mechanism; The Kinetic Drive; The Fallacy of the German State Philosophy.
In 1916 Dr. Crile was President of the College of Surgeons, the organization which maintains American surgery at its high standards of efficiency. Its 2,800 members are chosen after rigid investigation of their professional records, including 50 case histories of operations. It has done more than any other agency to improve the equipment and administration of American hospitals. During last week's sessions it laid the cornerstone of the John B. Murphy Memorial Hall, named in honor of a famous surgeon, to house its library.
Other features of the Chicago sessions :
1) Dr. F. N. C. Starr, Toronto, described the possibilities of thyroid therapy. Cretins (goiterous dwarf defectives) can be increased in stature six inches in a year by treatment with goat thyroid extract. A race of tall men may be bred. 2) Ethylene, the new anaesthetic (TIME, March 17) has been used in 907 cases in Chicago clinics, only one resulting fatally. 3) Sir William I. de Courcy Wheeler, President of the Royal College of Surgeons of Ireland, was a special guest. 4) Dr. "Will" Mayo (TIME, May 19) was a prominent figure, as usual. He made an address summarizing surgical progress. 5) Dr. Albert J. Ochsner, of the University of Illinois and Augustana Hospital, Chicago, was installed at President, succeeding Dr. Harvey Gushing, Boston.