The Weakness

"I've always believed that concentrated mental effort is pathological," says St. Louis' wispy, sad-eyed, 81-year-old Dr. Leo Loeb (rhymes with herb), "but I've always been too weak to resist it." Since he first took up the study of medicine 62 years ago, Dr. Loeb's pathological weakness for mental concentration has made him one of the world's greatest authorities in the field of pathology.

To honor his weakness, the American Medical Association dedicated the current issue of its ponderous Archives of Pathology to Dr. Loeb and his work. The issue is packed with learned articles by some of Dr. Loeb's most distinguished students, and contains a bibliography of more than 400 of his own writings. The old physician is apologetic about that, too. "Pens," he says, pointing to nine desk sets strewn about his cluttered study, "are another old weakness of mine."

New Facts. While surgeons perform miracles of skill in crowded operating theaters and kindly horse & buggy doctors fight their way through snowdrifts, pathologists, the least glamorous of medicos, sit alone in laboratories, studying the nature of disease itself so that others may recognize and cure it. German-born Leo Loeb never had much hankering for any other kind of medical work. After getting his M.D. at Zurich in 1897, he followed his physiologist brother Jacques* to Chicago and set up in practice as a physician. But he kept jotting down notes in his brother's laboratory at the university and conducting experiments on a collection of small mammals which he kept in a rented room behind a drugstore. After ten months he gave up his practice entirely, took a teaching job, and stepped up his research work.

The single-mindedness with which young Loeb pursued his cancer studies eventually pinned down a whole encyclopedia of fugitive facts on the subject. "It is impossible to view cancer research from any angle," said Harvard's late famed Physiologist Walter Cannon, "with out finding it enriched by Dr. Loeb."

Old Effort. Two years ago, after chalking up an impressive record of firsts in many fields besides cancer, Pathologist Loeb retired from his job on the medical faculty of St. Louis' Washington University. But his old weakness for mental effort was still with him. Last week, not yet fully recovered from a bout six months ago with virus pneumonia, he was at work on his latest and most important book, The Nature and Causes of Cancer. Next, says his wife Georgiana, a onetime assistant of Physician Sir William Osier, he is planning to go to work on a book about human relations. "Fortunately," says Dr. Loeb, "mental effort leads not to cancer, but only to indigestion."

* Jacques's sons, like their father and uncle, are both eminent scientists: Leonard is professor of physics at the University of California, Robert is professor of medicine at Columbia's College of Physicians and Surgeons.

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