Memories

MEMORIES* MORRIS FISHBEIN, MJJ.f Fourscore years of age covers a mass of time and a multitude of sins. At that age I completed my autobiography. I included both accomplishments and misdemeanors. The accomplishments may be remembered; the really serious misdemeanors should be interred with my bones. The blue-pencilling of the autobiography eliminated thousands of words. Their removal often saddened me as might the cutting away of various vital or highly prized organs. Just as the pathologist stores away what he salvages from the corpse in glass jars which display it better than it could be seen in the body, I offer here a few specimens which were either too light or too dark for the pages of the published book. I became assistant to the editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1913. Shortly after assuming this position, I was invited to attend a meeting of the Council on Pharmacy and Chemistry. This council had been established in 1905 to examine drug products and the claims made for them. Manufacturers who received approval could advertise their products in the Journal. The organization of this body had been bitterly attacked by an industry which at that time had small regard for the public, less regard for the medical profession, and no regard of the industrialists for each other. At that time, not one American pharmaceutical industry had a research department; few had laboratories to control the composition and quality of their preparations. Their greatest efforts seemed to have been directed to launching drug products developed abroad— principally in Germany but occasionally in Switzerland and France— in the United States and distributing them as widely as possible. The British industry was much like the American—only smaller. Among the first of the distinguished members of the Council on * Paper read before the Chicago Literary Club, May 24, 1971 and printed here with permission of the club. + Address: 5454 South Shore Drive, Chicago, Illinois 60615. 80 I Morris Fishbein · Memories Pharmacy and Chemistry whom I met and with whom later I became closely associated were Drs. Lafayette B. Mendel, Julius Stieglitz (professor of chemistry at the University of Chicago), Reid Hunt (professor of pharmacology at Harvard), and George W. McCoy of the U.S. Public Health Service. Mendel was one of the greatest pharmacologists and nutritionists of our time. Stieglitz was a calm, philosophical chemist. One time a building—a pharmaceutical warehouse on Sixty-third Street near the University of Chicago—began to burn. Many of the faculty and students who were fire buffs ran to view the flames and the firemen at work. At that time Dr. Paul Nicholas Leach, later secretary of the Council on Pharmacy and Chemistry, was a pupil in the chemistry department of the university. He joined the throng. Later he told me that as they watched the flames, Stieglitz said to him, "Look, Paul. See that bright yellow flame rising from the heap. That is sodium." I talked with Mendel about some of the changes which were beginning to develop in scientific knowledge. We discussed particularly the tremendous importance of infinitesimal amounts of matter. This was before consideration of the possibility of the development of knowledge of the atom or what is beginning to be a realization of the great significance of infinitesimal amounts of some chemical substances in the human body. No one knew then for instance that copper was an essential as is iron. Even the word "vitamin" had not yet come into common use. The incident reminds me that I had an interesting experience along similar lines with a distinguished politician who happened to be in Chicago. I was seated at my desk when a receptionist brought a card indicating that someone wished to see me. The card said simply "Henry Wallace." I explained to the receptionist that I knew three men named Henry Wallace and would require more information . She returned to the reception room and requested the visitor to indicate on the card the city in which he lived and the nature of his business. In a few minutes she returned bringing the card which now read, "Henry Wallace, Vice-President of the United States, Washington , D...