Turck's Cytost

A prodigy of versatility and popularity was the late Fenton Benedict Turck--doctor, scientist, esthete. The variety among his close friends mirrored the variety of his interests--Railroader Leonor Fresnel Loree (see p. 45), Anthropologist Sir Arthur Keith, Physicist Albert Abraham Michelson, Sculptor Lorado Taft, Entomologist Leland Ossian Howard, Politician Sir Robert Laird Borden, Immunologist Theobald Smith. As doctor he was an internist, with digestive disorders his specialty. Last week, at the behest of Manhattan's August Holland Society, friends of the late Fenton Benedict Turck gathered to honor the posthumous publication of a book by him--Action, of the Living Cell (Macmillan, $3.50).

Prodigious Dr. Turck invented a theory of disease. Biochemistry has not accepted the Turck theory but finds it highly provocative. Dr. Turck found experimental evidence, and reported in scores of scientific papers, that the juice of every living cell contains a substance which he called cytost (cytos for cell, t for Turck). Each species of animal and plant has its own kind of cytost. Injury to the body liberates quantities of cytost into the blood stream. If the injury is severe--as in mangling, mayhem or scalding--the vast quantity of exuded cytost acts as a poison, causes shock and often death. Occasional, small quantities of cytost are stimulating, but repeated small doses act as a cumulative poison.

With such empirical data in mind, Dr. Turck projected a rational theory to explain the mechanisms of shock, infection (especially of lungs and digestive system), protein poisoning, some allergies, focal infections, vaccines.

Despite investigations, Dr. Turck was unable to determine the precise nature of cytost. If a chemical, it is very stable, resisting heat (up to 300DEG C) and age (Sir Flinders Petrie reports that mummy dust contains an active poison). Dr. Turck thought cytost an enzyme or a hormone. In the Action of the Living Cell, he uttered the "earnest hope that other investigators will attempt to repeat and extend his observations." It was his scientific testament. While strolling Fifth Avenue last November he died of heart failure, aged 75. With him were his adoring wife and namesake son.

Prodigious also is Fenton Benedict Turck Jr. He worked with test tubes before he could play marbles, cultivated streptococci before he could write his A B C's. At 9, a zealous, frail, brown-eyed boy, he lectured the Chicago Microscopical Society on microbes and laboratory technique, showed his own lantern slides. During a fatiguing lecture which ran far beyond his regular bedtime, he grew pale. A wise scholar picked up the child, held him inverted by his feet. Right-side up again Young Turck continued his lecture. Father Turck decided that biology excited the child too much, diverted him to mathematics, economics, finance. Fenton Benedict Truck Jr., 30, is now a vice president of the $200,000,000 American Radiator & Standard Sanitary Corp.

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