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ROADS TO OZ. I. A PERSONAL ACCOUNT OF SOME U. S. -USSR MEDICAL EXCHANGES AND CONTACTS, 1942-1962* MICHAEL B. SHIMKINf Over many hills and dales Far beyond the seas and vales Opposite the sky, on earth. . . . [Peter Ershoff, Konek Gorbunok] I. Arctic Prelude The Soviet Union, née the Russian Empire, is the largest political area in the world, occupying almost the entire northern quarter of the Eurasian land mass. On the map, the midpoint of a line drawn between the western and the eastern boundaries of the country will rest close to a dot labeled Tomsk. In this dreary town in a harsh environment I was born in 1912. On many subsequent occasions I have given prayerful thanks for the fact that I was no longer there. Yet it is the accident of my birth, to a Russian physician mother and a civil engineer father, and the fleetness of foot of my parents during the holocaust of the Russian Revolution, that eventually led me to participate in a series of adventures in medical exchanges between the Soviet Union and the United States. My qualifications, in addition to retention of a rather childish level of the Russian language, were a medical education and medical research involvement at the National Cancer Institute. I held a commission in the Public Health Service, at its lowliest rank. There was only one other officer in the service in 1942 who spoke Russian. He was an older man in the Reserve Corps who had written a book on his experiences with the *Part II will appear in the autumn issue of Perspectives. Prepared with the support of contract NIH 263-76-C-0419 from the National Cancer Institute. •(•University of California, San Diego, Department of Community Medicine, School of Medicine, La Jolla, California 92093.© 1979 by The University of Chicago. 0031-5982/79/2204-0093$01.00 Perspectives in Biology and Medicine ¦ Summer 1979 | 565 White armies and the pleasures of shooting Bolsheviks; he was not considered to be a suitable liaison instrument with the Soviets. So it came to pass that on October 10, 1942, there was delivered a letter from the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) to the National Institute of Health (NIH) requesting "by higher authority" that someone prepare a report on Russian experiences in physiological adaptation to extreme cold. The deadline was 3 weeks. It did not take long for the marching orders to filter down to me and for me to make a beeline to the Congressional and Army Medical Libraries in Washington and the Welsh Memorial Library in Baltimore. There on the shelves, gathering dust, were over a half-dozen Russian journals on the Arctic, each containing relevant references to health and medical situations under arctic conditions. The extent of the writings, seemingly unknown to people presumably knowledgeable in the field, was mildly surprising. So was one American book on the subject describing the Soviet Arctic convict camps as a species of rest and rehabilitation centers. The author turned out to be a close friend and adviser to the secretary of the Department of the Interior. The factual information, however, was scant and predictable. The Arctic is a tough environment, requiring that special consideration be given to the clothing, food, and psychological reactions of men assigned there. The Russian literature on the subject stressed the need for vitamin supplementation, especially of vitamin C, and several papers indicated that conifer needles could be used as sources of antiscorbutic remedies. Characteristic psychotic manifestations called "menerik" and "emiriak" were considered to be forms of hysteria. Additional information was sought from a Red Cross representative who had spent some time in Siberia and from Ales Hrdlicka, the worldrenowned anthropologist at the Smithsonian Institution who contributed extensively to studies of the prehistoric migration of man to America from Asia. Exactly on the deadline date, a report of 1 1 pages and 23 references was forwarded through channels and disappeared into the maws of the system. Six months later, a report of some 50 pages, entitled "The Effects of Arctic Conditions upon Human Behavior and Reactions with Special Emphasis upon Russian Findings and Expeditionary Needs," with authors not identified and bearing the mildest stamp...

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