Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 24 January 1938 — Page 9

“Vagabond

»

From Indiana=Ernie Pyle

Ernie Declares 35-Cent Haircut By Japanese Girl Best He's Had; Sunrise Spoiled by Driving Rain.

IN THE AIR, Hilo-bound, Jan. 24.—In the air, my eye. Of course I'm not in the air. I can't write while flying. I'm already safely down, and sitting in ‘a hotel room in Hilo. But you have to work in a silly dateline now and then, or you're not an authentic reporter. So in the air-—thinking back about the Island of Maui—forgot to write a few little incidents there-—-better clean them up—the one about the Japanese barber— On my first morning on Maui I went out to get a haircut. Most of the barbers in the islands are Japanese girls. Yes, I said girls. So I had my hair cut by a Japanese girl. ’ The worst haircut I've ever had, I believe, was in Juneau, Alaska, and it cost a dollar. And I think the best haircut T've ever had was in Wailuku, on Maui, at the hands of a charming Jap- . Py anese girl in white uniform. It Mr, Pyle cost 35 cents, and I got a couple of little pats on the back of the neck besides. _ After going through that rather foreign experience in the faraway town of Wailuku, I went back to the hotel to look in the mirror in the hopes my hair had grown out enough to need cutting again. a It hadn't, but as I sat there the romantic illusion of being in a far strange place quickly faded and died. For out of the 5 & 10-cent store next door came floating up phonographically, over and over, that awful masterpiece known as ‘The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down.” ; I had another little anticlimax on Maui. It seems the thing all visitors to Maui must absolutely do | is go up to the top of volcano Haleakala and see the sunrise across the crater. 3 Well, the Rotarians were having a Saturday night blowout in Wailuku, with a lot of visiting Rotarians from the other islands, and they were to polish it off by all going up to see the sunrise on Haleakala. I was invited to go along.

Spends Sleepless Night

I went to bed at 11, fairly unexcited, but for some perverse reason couldn't go to sleep till about

MONDAY, JANUARY 24, 1938

Shock Cure Rescues Living Dead’

Insulin Treatment Returns Dementia Precox Victims to Sanity

By Jane Stafford ’

(Copyright, 1938, by Science Service) INGDALE, N. Y., Jan. 24.—Shocking people out of insanity is just as spectacular as it sounds. I watched the procedure as it is carried on at the Harlem Valley State Hospital here. No novelist, using the device of a severe mental shock to restore the sanity of a fiction character, ever imagined anything more dramatic or more frightening to watch than this scientific procedure which, although no cure-all, has already rescued hundreds of real persons from the living death of dementia precox. In the special wards reserved at the hospital here for the newly-discovered insulin shock treatment I saw some 15 patients stretched in death-like coma on their beds. At 7 o'clock that morning each of them had received a huge dose, by hypodermic injection, of insulin, potent diabetes remedy. For nearly five hours after that they lay unconscious. Only a short step separated them from death. Doctors Went from patient to patient, lifting an eyelid to note how far the pupil had contracted and thus to gauge the depth of the coma. Nurses felt at temples for the faint pulsing of blood through the veins. A sharp-eved nurse saw the disturbed breathing of one patient that meant danger. Desperately she tugged at the heavy body, rigid in its strange unconsciousness. Without a word spoken, an attendant came swiftly to her aid. He loosened restraint sheets and helped her throw the patient over. No time for gentleness. Time only to throw him face down and

lusions, the product of a disordered mind. Not fully recovered, but “much improved,” was another patient.

2:30. So when the phone rang at 3:30 and they said they were ready to start, I felt sort of like an | active volcano myself. | Well, it's 40 miles from Wailuku to Haleakala | crater. You go from sea level to 10,000 feet. | It was a warm and beautiful night, and as We | rose the lights of Wailuku and Kahului and Paia | spread out far below us. And our host, who was driving, said it was an almost perfect morning to see the sunrise. And so it would have been, I guess—except that | when we got within about 10 minutes of the top it | began to mist and fog up, and when we finally got | to the peak the wind was blowing 40 miles an hour, the rain was a horizontal deluge driving into you like a sand blast, you couldn't see five feet, and | if we'd been sitting on top of Mendenhall glacier | it couldn't have felt any colder. We ducked into the shelter house, built a fire, had hot coffee and sandwiches, dried out our | clothes and got slightly warm. The sun never did | come up. and it was 9:30 before we got back downtown and into bed. The Maui people felt terrible about it.

My Diary By Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt

First Lady, in New Environment,

Is Able to Shed Responsibilities.

YDE PARK, N. Y., Sunday—The drive up to the couniry on Saturday was increasingly lovely. On the way out of New York the snow was brown and horrid, as it always is in cities a short time after | it has fallen, but once we got into the real country it was white all about us. | My little apartment in Hyde Park is somewhat upset because, during the winter, under Miss Cook's direction, I am having the woodwork rubbed down to look more the way our furniture does. We spent the evening reading and I haven't had such a quiet, long night of sleep in many days. It is funny how one can leave and shed all the responsibilities that go with a certain kind of life, and feel as though one were part of a different life in a new | environment. For some of us. circumstances shape our lives so completely that I wonder sometimes what would have happened if we had been thrown into a different groove. I imagine I might have been quite a good housewife and done my work competently day by day and enjoyed it very much. I might have been a fairly adequate farmer's wife, having the necessary health and energy, but circumstances didn't make me that or a housewife,

Grieved by Death

I was very much grieved friend Bobby Fitzmaurice's death. Ever since I knew him in Albany, I remember his cheerful willingness to do whatever was asked of him.

On the President's first campaign trip in 1932, Mr. Fitzmaurice made all the advance arrangements and accompanied us on the train. On the way home he was taken seriously ill. He had to be taken off the train to a hospital in Omaha, Neb, and then came through to Chicago on his way to a New York hospital, Sick as he was, he greeted us with a smile and asked how the President was getting on with his arrangements. He had to spend weeks in the hospital and I never remember hearing him complain. Every Governor he served will miss him, for he became their friend.

New Books Today

Public Library Presents—

IEUT. VALCOUR, of the homicide squad of the “New York's Finest,” always gets his man, or perhaps his woman, when he fares forth to hunt down the criminal. CRIME OF VIOLENCE, by Rufus King (Doubleday), is the latest mystery which this sleuth is called upon to solve. The clever lieutenant suspects at once that it is something more than suicide when he sees Horace Worthington sitting so stiffly upright on the marble bench in the foyer of the Pine home. With the aid of Peter Selby, the young physician hurriedly called in, Lieut. Valcour soon determines that it is murder and follows the trail unerringly from the handsome city residence to the estate on Long Island. With the stage set for a dramatic climax, he forces a confession from the murderer by offering him a glass of milk, and so solves the mystery and brings about a happy ending of all the troubles of Joan Pine and young Selby.

to hear of our old

u ” 5

HE Western mind with its conceptions of democracy and fraternity scarcely can escape prejudice in contemplating the tragic figure of Nicholas I of Russia. Mohammed Essed-Bey, in NICHOLAS Ii, PRISONER OF THE PEOPLE (Funk) presents the background which led the Tsar to seek retirement m “quiet places, away from the city,” and made it impossible for him to cross the bridge that led to an understanding of his subjects. Heir of an autocrat line of absolutism, he firmly believed himself God's anointed; mystic piety was his heritage, as were fatalism and pessimism. As a youth he was confronted with the fact that the Tsars of All the Russians had died violent deaths for two centuries. The significance of the demand of his people for responsible representative government totally escaped him, and inevitably, blindly, he resisted every influence that could have interpreted it to him. - Against this background, the author recounts the long chain of misfortune and disaster which was climaxed by the murder of the Tsar and his entire family on the night of July 16, 1018,

pound his back, so the accumulated mucus would drain out of his throat and

not choke him. At noon I saw the patients awakened. The sweet, life-saving, insulin-countevacting solution of sugar and water was poured into the stomach through a rubber tube inserted in a nostril. The waking process was horrible to watch. It showed, if ncthing else had, how severe the shock had been, how far gone the patients’ consciousness. The patients retched and choked. u un N OME vomited the vital sugar. In such cases a doctor and nurse came swiftly with syringe and hypodermic needle. Light-ning-fast the tourniquet was tied around the arm, the needle plunged into the vein and more sugar solution injected. Delay of even a minute might mean death. The room grew hot. Attendants moved swiftly, tightening restraint sheets to keep the awakening patients from throwing themselves out of bed as they thrashed about. Inhuman grimaces distorted the unconscious faces. And always, the three doctors, six nurses and four attendants watched and worked in swift, silent precision. The treatment is given five days a week, Monday through Friday, with Saturday and Sunday for rest. This continues for weeks, until the patient has completely recovered or the physicians think he cannot be helped by further treatment. The patients themselves have no memory of the horror or the drama of the treatment. The drama comes from the fact that if the counteracting sugar reaches their blood a minute too late, they will die. The horror comes from their struggle back from their deeply unconscious state and also from the fact that no matter how improved they may be by the treatment, they usually return for a shory time, while they are awaking, to their former mentally disordered state. " ” n ANY of them return to new life, unclouded by the experience they have heen through or by the shadows of mental disease. I

saw them finally reach full consciousness, sit up and drink another cup of sugar and water. That evening I talked to some of these patients. One of them seems on the way to what the physicians at the institution term “recovery.” He no longer sees faces in the sky and no longer thinks that he is being persecuted. Better than that, he realizes that his hallucinations were made de-

He, too, had seen faces and he believed birds and animals talked to him. He is no longer bothered by these delusions. The scene that I witnessed here is being repeated daily in many public and private hospitals through the world. Patiently, heroically, physicians and nurses and attendants are performing over and over again the deft, lifesaving ministrations I watch&d here. The insulin shock treatment for dementia precox was originated by Dr. Manfred Sakel at the Neurological and Psychological Klinik of the University of Vienna. It was at this famous medical center that Prof. Julius Wagner-Jaurreg originated the malaria treatment for another mental disease, paresis, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize. Dr. Sakel seems also to have in him the stuff of which Nobelists are made. ” = 5 IS discovery of the value of insulin shock for (treating mental disease was made as a 1esult of his studies of drug addiction. Large doses of insulin, he found, alleviated the withdrawal symptoms which are the feature most dreaded by morphine addicts undergoing treatment. At first he used doses of insulin just large enough to pacify the patients who grew excited after the withdrawal of morphine. In many cases, the period of treatment was considerably shortened by this insulin treatment. The excited state of morphine addicts suffering withdrawal symptoms is so much like the types of excitement seen in some dementia precox patients that it occurred to Dr. Sakel that it might be possible to influence this latter type of excitement by insulin. His spectacularly successful results attracted wide attention from fellow scientists. But because the treatment is so dangerous, they hesitated for months, vears even, before they dared to try the new method. Dr. Sakel himself has always pointed out the danger of the treatment and urged extreme caution. The treatment can only be safely carried out in a wellequipped institution with a large, specially trained staff of doctors and nurses. » » ”

ATIENTS suffering with dementia precox, however, have heretofore always been considered as good as lost—doomed to a lifetime of the living death of insanity. Dangerous as the insulin shock treatment is, it seems worth trying in these hopeless cases, and one by one, physicians on the staffs of mental hospitals have dared to try it.

f :

The Harlem Valley State Hos-

Side Glances—By Clark

EN

"We'd better drive around the block a few times. The Quigsleys aren't open dressed yet,"

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En Ea A Sa BO RL RS

The Indianapolis Times

——— . a SR ar re

Entered as Second-Class Matter Indianapolis,

at Postoffice,

The dramatic scene in the insulin shock treatment ward, where the mentally ill are shocked back to sanity,

is depicted here by an artist.

Grim brick walls with iron-barred windows once destined for a state prison, in a remote valley ringed by foreboding hills, is the setting for the drama of rescuing human minds from the fog and con-

fusion and blankness of dementia precox.

This is Harlem Valley, N. Y,,

State Hospital, first public institution in the United States to adopt the

insulin shock cure.

pital here was one of the first in the United States to institute it, and it was begun here under the direct supervision of Dr. Sakel himself. He was invited by Dr. John R. Ross, the superintendent, to give a course of training in the new treatment to the staff of this hospital and to a group of physicians from other state hospitals in New York. At the Harlem Valley institution, the results of treatment are summed up according to four grades. Some of the patients—6 out of 52 treated so far—have recovered completely. Another 15 are in the class “much improved,” no longer bothered by their delusions, but not realizing that they were only delusions. These patients are now at home living normal lives. Of the others, 22 are “improved” while 9 are “unimproved.” There have been no deaths. The results of the insulin shock treatment appear even more striking when the figures are looked at in another way. Harlem Valley State Hospital, like other state institutions, does not get patients until they have been sick for some time and the mental disease has become chronic with them.

Of the last 52 cases treated here since Dec. 8, 1936, patients had been sick from one to two years. Of these, 3 recovered, 3 were much improved and 2 remained unimproved. ‘Thirty-two of the patients had been victims of mental disease for from two to six years. Of this group of chronically sick, 3 recovered, 10 were much improved and able to go home, 15 were improved and only 4 were unimproved. Another group of 12 cases had been sick for over six years. None of these recovered, but 2

See This Page Tomorrow

for "An Ex-King Is

Going "Home.

were much improved and able to go home, 7 were improved and only 3 of this apparently hopeless group were unimproved. n » » N the other side is a darker picture. The treatment does not help all cases, is of greatest help in early stages of the mental disease, and can in no sense be considered a cure-all. Some relapsed after being much improved and had to be brought back to the hospital. Some of these improved again after further treatment, others did not. This brings up the question of whether the shock treatment is really a cure. Dementia precox, or schizophrenia as it is also called, has hitherto been a hopeless mental ailment. Always there have been some patients who appeared to recover without any treatment, a few permanently, but most of them only to relapse still further into mental disorder. Whether the insulin-treated patients will stay well is a question that cannot be answered yet. Not enough time has elapsed to show whether the improvement is any more lasting than that which has occurred in some cases that had no treatment. One authority believes that the constitutional tendency to the disease always will remain and that even those patients who recover after treatment may relapse if subjected to severe mental strain. The more hopeful view is that even if the first insulin-treated cases relapse, the treatment will succeed in the end. Questions of dosage and of how long to continue the treatment have not been established. Dr. Sakel is frequently questioned on this very point of how much insulin to give and how many times to repeat the shcck. His answers to physicians are always that each case has to be considered by itself. Some patients need a large enough dose of insulin to produce convulsions. Others improve without convulsions but after the shock of coma.

Dr. Manfred Sakel of the University of Vienna explains to a group of American physicians how he discovered that insulin, lifesaving diabetes remedy, can be used to shock hopelessly insane persons back to sanity.

HE victims of this most common and most tragic of all mental ills number over 150,000 in the United States alone. Most of the victims are stricken just as they are attaining maturity, at the very outset of their economic independence. The cost of their support and care. at home or in institutions, plus the loss of their removal from productive pursuits, is at least $1,000,000 a day. Added to this is the incalculable cost of the disease in terms of human suffering. The share of this that must be borne by the patients, shut away from the world of the sane by the thick clouds of mental disorder, cannot even be imagined. Easy to imagine but hard to evaluate is the cost in grief to the families who must stand helplessly by, unable to aid. For all these, insulin shock treatment brings hope for freedom from economic burden, from shame or old-fashioned stigma, from grief and suffering, best of

: all from insanity itself.

Heard In Congress—

Rep. Woodrum ( D. Va.): Do not let us be swept off our feet. I appeal to you to harden your heart against the soft, persuasive eloquence of our beloved friend from New York (Mr. Mead). If you want to vote on how much we love Jim Mead, we will vote with you and make it unanimous. If you want to vote on the question of how much he loves the postal employees, we will also make that unanimous, but let us pemper our sentiment with a little bit of logic and good judgment. (Applause.)

| we didn't

| crowd was so dense that we couldn't | move another | however, that something of great moment was hape | pening just then, because the next thing I knew, the

A WOMAN'S VIEW By Mrs. Walter Ferguson

“YN the selection of husbands for my daughters I shall have only one standard: person?” Thus writes Lin Yutang, young Chinese philosopher whose books have been called the most civilized of our time. With all our many rules for achieving happiness in marriage, has one ever been offered better than this? I think not. Reasonableness, common sense, what Grandma used to call ‘“‘gumption,” that's all it takes to get along in marriage.

One hundred per cent perfect

marriage is out of the cards for us|

anyway. We wouldn't like it if we had it, because being imperfect creatures perfection in any form is too pallid for our tastes. Actually most people enjoy quarrels. Our lives would be very dull without them. : It's a foregone conclusion that every couple will quarrel occasionally. Why not let it go at that and proceed to the business of deciding how those quarrels should be pursued? With gumption, I hope, which means that you should al-

\| ways be willing to look at the other

side of the argument and will not push your point too far. Grandma managed her life and love very nicely by using gumption. She hadn't so much hifaultin education, but she certainly knew enough to apply common sense to her uncommon problems. And it's being whispered that she handled and held grandpa better than the basa woman handles and holds

is he a reasonable |

Jasper—By Frank Owen

"| never would: have let you practice Ju-Jitsu on the furniture,. if

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Second Section

PAGE 9

Ind.

Our Town

By Anton Scherrer

Riley Added Fifth Stanza to His 'When the Frost Is On the Punkin’ For Harrison Ratification Meeting.

S originally published in The Indianape olis Journal on Aug. 5, 1882, James Whitcomb Riley’s poem, “When the Frost Is on. the Punkin,” consisted of three stanzas. The fourth stanza was not added until the

publication of “Old Fashioned Roses” in 1888. Few people know, however, that on one occa= sion the poem had five stanzas. That was the night the people of Indianapolis turned out to ratify Benjamin Harrison's nomination in Tomlinson Hall. I guess T was about 10 years old when Father and I went up town

one afternoon to watch the crowds milling around the bulletin boards. We never got anywhere near the bulletin boards. As a matter of fact, get any farther than Maryland St. at which point the

Mr. Scherrer

inch, I was aware,

crowd had turned into a parade. It was the noisi= est parade I ever heard. Everybody, with the excepe tion of myself, had a tin horn. I don't know why Father didn’t provide me with a horn, unless it was because he was a Grover Cleveland Democrat and wanted to bring me up right. Well, when Father saw the crowd behaving like that, he said he guessed that Mr. Harrison was the Republican candidate for President. As usual, father was absolutely right. That same night there was another parade, but this time it was better organized. It was a different kind of noise, too. The horns were still in evidence, to be sure, but they didn’t work as well as they did that afternoon., That's because there wasn’t enough wind left in Indianapolis to blow them. The big noise that night was made by drums. For some reason, 00, most of the men in the parade wore red hats. Idon't know where they picked them up, but I suspect they came from Kipp Brothers.

Breathing Spell Was Short

After that we had a little breathing spell, but it didn’t last long, because two nights later the big ratie fication meeting took place in Tomlinson Hall. It was preceded by another parade, and it was one prolonged roar from the Union Depot to Seventh St. (now 16th

St.). The shouting and cheering lasted until 11 o'clock when suddenly, with the stars and moon shining, there came a heavy rain which drove everybody home, Of course, the people in Tomlinson Hall were ail right, because they were under cover. They were lucky in another way, too, because that was the night Mr. Riley tacked on the fifth stanza to his poem: “And they’s still another idy 'at I ort to here append, In a sort of note-beany fur to taper off the end In a manner more befitten’ to a subject jes’ in view Regardin’ things in politics, and what we're goin’ to do Along a little later, when affairs at Washington, ‘At’s been harassin’ us so long, has got so Harrison, We're goin’ ti give the man a seat, and set him there k-sock When the frost is on the punkin, and the fodder's in the shock.”

Jane Jordan—

Attitude of Defeat Is Handicap To Person Looking for Employment,

EAR JANE JORDAN-—In looks, character and personality I am still considered to be around 20, but in reality I am on my last round of twenties. I have a good education, have worked since I was 10 years old, supported myself in needs and contributed my share of the upkeep at home. Within the past four years I have had four different positions in office routine and each time I was let out because of the lack of business. Today I am looking for something without much luck. I am single and would like to be married, but for financial reason I have to wait. It isn’t easy to live off my brother-in-law which I do, when I have the ability to earm my own money. I am beginning to ask “Is life worth living when there is nothing in sight?” What is your answer? UNEASY.

td # ”

Answer—Thousands are facing the same economia problem that is baffling you. It is your misfortune to have come into your young manhood at a period of the world’s history when jobs are hard to get and success difficult to attain. This fact makes it necessary for you to be better than the average to land. What I wonder is how you spend the time you have on your hands. Do you spend it in moody reflection, in futile resentment, in giving yourself up completely to discouragement? Or do you spend it in pursuing your education, improving yourself, in reading and active preparation for a specialized job? There are dozens of courses given in various departments of business by our colleges which would prepare you for a better job than the routine of an office. Believe it or not, employers still have to search for unusual peo= ple to fill important jobs. In the well-born words of the old adage, there is still plenty of room at the top. Are you tops or just average? It is difficult not to adapt an attitude of defeat after many disappointments. He who can retain his courage in the face of hardship is made of the stuff that succeeds in the end. The very attitude of defeat which you have now. is a frightful handicap to you in landing and holding a job. ' By way of illustration may I repeat what one per sonnel director told me at Christmas? In placing exe tras in temporary jobs during the holidays, she tried to take those who needed work the most, but found that they carried their grimness over into business with them, which prevented them from doing good work. A sullen, discouraged attitude is a terrific handi= cap to good work. Her comment was that if she acted for the good of the business instead of the individual, she would be obliged to hire people who were not so far down in the depths. What would you do in her place? How would you handle this problem? Time and again I have seen people in business so resentful of the hard work they were doing for the small salary they were getting that their eyes were closed to opportunities obvious to the more aggressiva employees. My hunch is that it is aggression you lack, The fighting spirit in you has turned in on yourself, Tackle something. Even if it is just a course of study it is better than tackling nothing. JANE JORDAN.

Put your problems in a letter to Jane Jordan, who will | answer your questions in this column daily. i

Walter O'Keefe—

OLLYWOOD, Jan. 24-Cleopatra’s successor came to the throne with the marriage of Farida to Farouk. The names make it sound like the merger of two American breakfast foods. \ Those Egyptian hombres certainly know how to stage a wedding, too. They kept the bride in a dark room and made her wear a veil. While the queen and her maid hid in one room, Farouk, in another, married her old man. Then, after they settled the question of dough, her pa stuck his head in the door of her room and said, “Don’t look now, kid, but you just got married. Congratulations.” Inasmuch as the young king married only ona wife, he made the whole affair front page news in Egypt. Ordinarily the Egyptians are something like Tommy Manville over here, only they get it all over at ony SH