When TIME'S editors decided to do a cover story on the fight against cancer, they were confronted with any number of first-rate men and institutions from which to select their cover subject. Manhattan's Memorial Hospital was chosen because it offered a complete cross-section of modern cancer research, and its director, Dr. Cornelius P. Rhoads, was a leading symbol of this effort.

The story was assigned to TIME'S Science editor, Jonathan Norton Leonard. Like his recent cover stories on Astronomer Edwin Hubble (TIME, Feb. 9, 1948) and Jet Pilot Charles Yeager (TIME, April 18), this one meant that he had to immerse himself quickly in a serious, highly technical,

changing field. To this end, he virtually joined the staff of Memorial Hospital and its associated research laboratory, the Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research. TIME Researcher Leona Farmer went with him.

Daily, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Leonard went through Memorial and Sloan-Kettering, talking to biochemists, organic chemists, physical chemists, physicists, virologists, clinicians, surgeons, etc. He talked to Dr. Rhoads for hours on end, and at night read through the foot-high stack of scientific papers the director had given him. Some of them were as yet unpublished. Most were written in science's highly technical terminology, and in the process of reading them Leonard found himself learning new languages like that of cytology (the study of cells).

Meanwhile, Miss Farmer interviewed researchers, nurses, hospital attendants, superintendents, and others. Leonard found that Memorial's highly effective working laboratory was unspectacular and full of quiet purpose. What he couldn't help remembering, however, were the jolly children in Room 102 L, undergoing treatment for the dread disease, leukemia. When he sat down at his typewriter to try to tell his story clearly and accurately, without oversimplifying or sensationalizing it, the children in 102 L "automatically" became the lead.

Dr. Rhoads read the scientific sections of the cover story before publication and found no error in them. After the issue was on the newsstands the father of one Memorial patient, a 16-year-old boy, read the story and set out to buy 100 newsstand copies to send to friends.

Reader's Digest asked and was given permission to reprint the story. Later, after all concerned at Memorial Hospital had had a chance to read and discuss it, we were asked if we could supply Memorial with 450,000 reprints of the story and its cover portrait.

Memorial plans to distribute the reprints widely throughout the U.S. to state cancer centers, medical schools and libraries, physicians and surgeons and, especially, to laymen who are interested in cancer research. Regarding its emphasis on this last group, a spokesman for the hospital said: "TIME'S story was well done, and it tells the story of cancer effectively and in language the layman can understand. We think that as many laymen as possible ought to read it."

Cordially yours,

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