Spencer for Voegtlin

One medical hero replaces another this week as head of the National Cancer Institute: Virginia-born Dr. Roscoe R. Spencer, 54, succeeds Swiss-born Dr. Carl Voegtlin, 63.

Dark, shy Dr. Voegtlin has headed the Institute (in Bethesda, Md.) since 1938. Since he joined the Public Health Service in 1913 he has headed research which compared the acidity and oxygen consumption of cancerous and normal cells, calculated the amount of vitamin C in tumors, discovered chemicals which produce cancer, studied the effect of radio waves on cancer.

Dr. Spencer, his successor, is as modest as he is short. But his work in proving the tick transmission of deadly Rocky Mountain spotted fever (in some places it kills nine out of ten) and developing a protective vaccine has brought him a public reputation. He was idealized as the hero of Lloyd Douglas' novel. Green Light--moviegoers know him as the man (Errol Flynn) who went into the Rockies after ticks. Since 1938, as assistant director of the Cancer Institute, he has done much spadework on what heat, radium and cancer-causing substances do to animals--one way of studying what they can do to man.

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