The Mustard-gas Miracle

I JUST RECEIVED INVEN tion & Technology today and read with interest the article “From Poison Gas to Wonder Drug” (by Beryl Lieff Benderly, Summer 2002). The article states that mechlorethamine, derived from nitrogen mustard, “provides the M in MOPP, a cocktail of pharmaceuticals used against Hodgkin’s disease.” After surgery I received MOPP along with other drugs over a six-month period, followed by radiation, as treatment for Hodgkin’s disease. The side effects are real, as stated in the article, but I have been well for more than 23 years and look forward to many more years of good health. I and other cancer survivors owe a debt of gratitude to the researchers in the article and their colleagues who have explored new avenues for treatment.

Richard Drees
BRYAN, TEX.

The Mustard-gas Miracle

“FROM POISON GAS TO Wonder Drug” reminded me of my own encounter with wonder drugs in the mid-1950s. I graduated as an M.D. from the University of Wisconsin in 1936 and had an internship in Phoenix, Arizona. That fall I treated a case of meningococcal meningitis by inserting a needle into the spinal canal, binding the child to a frame, and allowing spinal fluid to escape. Supposedly this washed away the bad germs, but in two days she was only a statistic.

Within the week I treated another meningitis case. This time the attending physician gave me a red dye called Prontosil and instructed me to inject it into the buttock every four hours. By the second dose the child was noticeably improved, and he made a complete recovery. The active ingredient in the dye was found to be sulfanilamide, and it was quickly made available in tablet form for the treatment of many bacterial diseases.

The next fall a Massengill drug salesman visited my office to give me four bottles of sulfanilamide syrup for children. Before I could try this on any of my little patients, the Journal of the American Medical Association published a warning. The syrup was causing renal shutdown and death. Massengill had used ethylene glycol—antifreeze—for a solvent. This was before the Food and Drug Administration made manufacturers test medications before they marketed them.

George H. Hess, M.D.
UNIVERSITY PLACE, WASH.

The Beetle Book

AH, THE MEMORIES: ROLL ing around in the snow under the VW, adjusting the valves with frozen fingers and a feeler gauge; setting the timing with an alligator clip and a flashlight bulb; straining and cussing to get that after-market muffler to fit. All these experiences and more were shared by those of us who owned Volkswagens in the late sixties and seventies and used John Muir’s How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive to keep it running. Paul Ceruzzi’s wellwritten article “How the Compleat Idiot Became the Technogeek” (Summer 2002) really described the way it was. To be guided by Muir’s book was like having a favorite old uncle there with you. It saddened me to learn that he had passed away.

By the way, the reason the manual advised one to warm up the engine was that Muir advocated the disconnection of the automatic choke. He felt that the rich gas mixture during warm-up accelerated piston-ring wear.

Victor Quaglieri
VIA E-MAIL

The Beetle Book

BIG KUDOS FOR THE LAYOUT of the VW article. I’ve been a graphic designer and editor for eight years, and that’s one of the coolest I’ve seen in a long time. As I was reading the article, I found myself bending the magazine back on itself as if it were really spiral-bound. My boyfriend read it holding it the same way, and he didn’t realize it was graphics until I pointed out the spirals to him.

Jeanne Stuart
VIA E-MAIL

Jefferson Nukes Panama

THANKS FOR “THE PLAN TO Nuke Panama” (“Postfix,” Spring 2002), Benjamin Ryder Howe’s fascinating article on the 1950s-era proposal to blast a wide sealevel replacement for the Panama Canal. Howe calls the idea “by far the strangest” of five centuries’ worth of visionary schemes for creating a canal across Central America. But consider Thomas Jefferson’s scheme. He wrote that if Spain were to “make an opening through the Isthmus of Panama, a work much less difficult than some even of the inferior canals of France, however small this opening should be in the beginning, the tropical current, entering it with all its force, would soon widen it sufficiently for its own passage, and thus complete, in a short time, that work which otherwise will still employ it for ages.” Jefferson’s political opponents often mocked him unfairly as a science visionary. On this question he obviously would have earned it.

Steven T. Corneliussen
Senior Science Writer
Thomas Jefferson National
Accelerator Facility
NEWPORT NEWS, VA.

The Art Of Invention

I VERY MUCH ENJOYED YOUR article on Chesley Bonestell (“To Boldly Paint What No Man Has Painted Before,” by Ron Miller, Summer 2002). I had long admired his work without really knowing anything about him. When I was a teenager, in the early 1950s, I read the Collier’s series avidly, and I still have the issues. I joined NASA as an engineer in 1963 and stayed for 38 years. I can’t say for sure that the Collier’s articles influenced me in this career choice, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they had.

John Hrastar
SILVER SPRING, MD.

The Art Of Invention

AS AN ARTIST I FOUND IT interesting that your Summer 2002 issue showcased not one but two painters, Chesley Bonestell and Robert Fulton (“Robert Fulton’s Dream,” by John H. White, Jr.). The artistic element in technical and scientific innovation goes mostly unheralded but is quite substantial. In addition to Fulton, Samuel Morse, the inventor of telegraphy, was a professional painter. We may therefore ascribe the foundation of our modern industrial-and-communications-based society to a pair of artists. Leonardo is the epitome of the artist/innovator, anticipating developments in aviation, fluid dynamics, scientific warfare, and other areas too numerous to count. Lesser known, however, is Galileo’s involvement in the arts. An accomplished watercolorist, he was a member of the academy at Padua, and there is little doubt that his artistic training gave him the perceptual and conceptual tools to correctly interpret what he saw through the telescope. Scratch an innovation, and you’ll find an artist.

Marc Clamage
MANSFIELD, MASS.

The Art Of Invention

I TOOK YOU UP ON YOUR challenge to find someone under 20 who knows who Robert Fulton was. I asked my 11-year-old son. He knew Fulton invented the steamboat, but neither of us really knew that Fulton was more responsible for the steamboat’s commercial success than for its actual invention until your article. Thank you.

Jay Auxt
HORSHAM, PA.

A Solar Snow Job?

I AM DISAPPOINTED BY THE article by John Perlin, “Solar Power: The Slow Revolution” (Summer 2002). The author’s approach is hucksterism. Perlin notes (like most writers on the subject), “The cost of solar cells remains too high for photovoltaic electricity to compete with electricity from utility lines.” One might ask why. Let me offer an answer. To make solar cells from sand, an abundant material, takes power, electrical power. Lots of power. Associates who are expert in the field tell me that a solar cell must operate for 20 years just to pay back the energy it cost to build it. But then again Perlin may know this. He writes, “When purchasing them, the customer buys 25 to 30 years of electricity.” Sure he does. He has to buy the energy to produce the solar cell.

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Harvey Cragon
Professor Emeritus of Engineering
University of Texas
AUSTIN, TEX.