Glands From the Dead

The patient, a middle-aged woman, was dying. She had just been brought in to the Jewish Hospital in Alexandria, Egypt. She was a victim of Addison's disease, a slow decline of the adrenal glands which cap the kidneys, gush forth the hormone cortin and the supercharging adrenalin when the nervous system signals "Emergency!" No synthetic hormones or drugs had been able to save her.

In a room near by lay another patient, dying of brain tumor. Both patients belonged to the same blood group. The sick woman's doctors, F. Katz and Fritz Mainzer, decided on a ghoulish experiment.

As soon as the victim of brain tumor breathed his last, they cut him open, slit out one of his healthy adrenal glands. Then they gave the dying woman a local anesthetic, grafted the gland in her wasted abdominal muscles, nursed her along with synthetic hormones till the graft took. Within a week the gland was functioning and the woman was well enough to leave the hospital.

In a recent issue of the British Medical Journal, Drs. Katz & Mainzer reported that their experiment, the sixth successful one in medical history, gave "excellent" results. After the operation the patient was well enough to get along without any medicines. Only carryover: "Great exertion or excitement" makes her a little sleepy.

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