Low Life

"We do not know what life is, but we do know that life is certainly a physical property, a behavior of a colloidal miscella [grain] of a particular constitution. In order to study this constitution, this behavior, we must necessarily turn to the smallest particle of autonomous living matter, where life presents itself in its most elementary form, where the complexity of the vital phenomena is least extensive. This infinitely small being which it is necessary to study is, therefore a protobe [protos=first, bios= life] and to be even more specific, it is that one which can most readily be observed, the bacteriophage." The quotation is from a new book, The Bacteriophage and Its Behavior, by F. d'Herelle, M. D.* (Williams & Wilkins--$8.00). Dr. d'Herelle did not set out, as did Dr. Crile, to explain the nature of life or of death. His chief interest has been with diseases and their causes. He has dealt with what once was considered the lowest form of life-- bacteria. He has ended by hypothesizing an even lower form, the protobe, which is neither animal nor vegetable,--simply something living. One type of protobe, the bacteriophage, he has made his peculiar study. He has found that it is the scourge to bacteria, which in turn cause disease in man. Just as almost every disease has some causative species or strain of bacteria, just so every kind of bacteria has a bacteriophage which kills it. He has not seen these bacteriophages. But he has measured them. The diameter of each one is between 20 and 30 millicrons or about one-billionth of an inch./- Also, he has seen how they destroy a bacterium. One or more bacteriophages, of the kind peculiar to the bacterium under study, penetrate the body of the germ. There they breed until they number some 18, when they become too many for the bacterium to contain any longer. It explodes into floccules, minute yet visible below the microscope lens. These floccules quickly dissolve.

This reproduction of bacteriophages at the expense of their bacterial hosts is now termed bacteriophagy. It is a disease of bacteria.

If physicians could make bacteria sick unto death, they would have one more implement in their armentarium of cures. Bacteriophagy has proved effective against some two dozen bacterial species.

But too much must not yet be expected of bacteriophagy. At the very end of his treatise, Dr. d'Herelle warns: "In the prophylactic and therapeutic use of the bacteriophage there is a vast field for commercial exploitation. This has already begun. I cannot witness it without apprehension. . . . Too often, commercial firms mislead both physicians and the public by clever quotations (clever in the sense that they avoid conflict with the law) tending to make it appear that such and such a scientist supervises their products, or even controls them. I now declare that I am, and will always remain, a stranger to all 'commercial enterprises. I may go further in this direction and state that every time that I have treated a patient it has been done solely from a scientific motive." The workroom obscurity which Dr. d'Herelle maintains, Professor George Hathorn Smith of Yale would like. Before Dr. d'Herelle's first brochures relating to bacteriophagy appeared in 1917, Professor Smith, bacteriologist and immunologist, felt that "our ideas concerning immunity were entirely inadequate." There seemed "injustice in so organizing this universe that of all living creatures the one with the greatest parasitic tendencies should itself be free of parasites." Dr. d'Herelle's work suggested an explanation. Professor Smith became his translator, really his collaborator. Besides their confluence of research, both have the same reluctance against publicity, will not release their photographs for the acquaintance of a respecting world. The device in their escutcheons might be: The work's significance, not its associations.

Dentists

Last week dentists who specialize in making twisted teeth align with normal teeth in a patient's mouth met at Manhattan. They constituted the First International Orthodontic Congress. Simultaneously, at Philadelphia, the National Society of Dental Prosthetists was in annual session. Its members are dentists who specialize in making plates, bridges and like artificial dentures. Orthodontists. Six hundred, including nearly all the 450 in the U.S., convened from 15 nations. They heard--that orthodontia lies at the basis of the science of dentistry (Dr. Augustus S. Downing of Albany, N. Y.); that universities are now recognizing orthodontia as a dignified science and that the average dentist earns more than the average doctor (Dr. Leuman M. Waugh of Manhattan); that adenoids, mouth breathing and thumb-sucking mess up the arrangement of teeth (Dr. Percy R. Howe of Boston); that an underslung jaw and prominent chin does not of necessity indicate strength of character but simply that the individual's mother kept his thumb out of his mouth when he was a baby (Dr. W. Stanley Wilkinson of Melbourne, Australia); that all children should begin to have their teeth straightened between the sixth and eleventh years. The next congress will be in London or Paris in 1930 or 1931. Prosthetists heard with acclaim that the phrase "false teeth" is to be deplored when "denture" more pleasantly describes the "exquisite creations of the master dentist of today" (Dr. Harry J. Homer of Pittsburgh); that every time a child eats a lollypop "he might as well say goodbye to one of his teeth," and for "every man who habitually eats soft, mushy foods" the human race is one step nearer utter toothlessness.* "Diet is the most important factor in keeping the teeth ... in good health" (Dr. S. E. Butler of Tokyo, Japan). Some artificial dentures (plates and bridges) were shown, which deserved the description of "exquisite engineering in miniature."

*A modest scientist, he never signs his first name even to personal correspondence. Correspondents recall that given name as being "Felix." He was born in Montreal in 1873 ; educated in France. From 1901 to 1905 he was government bacteriologist in Guatemala. At present he is at Alexandria, Egypt, director of the bacteriological service of the Egyptian Sanitary, Maritime, and Quarantine Council. /-A millicron is one one-millionth of a millimeter, or one one-thousandth of a micron, or one twenty-fifth of a billionth of an inch. *This is the basis of the argument for Ipana tooth paste as advertised princeipally in Sunday papers and fiction-magazines.