After Pathology, Physiology

Last May Dr. Simon Flexner, director of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research since its organization 33 years ago, went to John D. Rockefeller Jr. and said in effect: "I want to resign. I am 72 years old. I am weary. I want to write a biography of Dr. William Henry Welch." Mr. Rockefeller agreed, told Dr. Flexner to pick his successor. Dr. Flexner found a man a few blocks up the street whose appointment, after due investigation and consideration, the Trustees and Scientific Directors of the Rockefeller Institute announced last week.

Dr. Herbert Spencer Gasser is a professor of physiology at Cornell University School of Medicine where his researches on electrical currents passing through nerves and their relation to the central nervous system have given him large professional fame. By means of vacuum tubes he has magnified those currents 3,000,000 times, found that some of them move more than three miles a minute. At 47, he is unmarried, a lover of music who plays no instrument.

Physiologist Gasser's appointment may mark a major turning point in the teaching of Medicine in the U. S. Under the drive of Dr. Welch, who died last year, and Dr. Flexner, who retires this autumn, pathology has dominated medical research. Medical students learn a great deal about diseased cells, tissues and organs, comparatively little about how the human body actually works. This is the province of physiology, which, under Dr. Gasser, may in the future be emphasized at Rockefeller Institute which, in turn, would influence all U. S. medical schools.

With little experience as an administrator, Dr. Gasser was uneasy about a job that may curtail the study of nerve physiology on which his scientific reputation stands and that entails the full management of the Rockefeller Institute and the supervision of its 651 employes, including two Nobel Prizewinners and Charles Augustus Lindbergh. Before he would accept Dr. Flexner's offer, he went to St. Louis to ask advice of old friends at Washington University where he worked for 15 years. They soothed his qualms, advised him to accept. He returned to Dr. Flexner's office, accepted, went scooting off to Europe to get perspective on what can be the most important medical job in the world.

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