=REC’D MAY 23 1963
HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL – DEPARTMENT OF MEDICINE
BOSTON CITY HOSPITAL
HARVARD MEDICAL UNIT
THORNDIKE MEMORIAL LABORATORY AND
SECOND AND FOURTH MEDICAL SERVICES
May 22, 1963
Dr. Linus Pauling
California Institute of Technology
Pasadena, California
Dear Linus:
By chance someone drew my attention to a news release for the morning papers
as of Friday, May 10 from the University News Office at the Medical School. It concerned
the prospective publication by Vallee and Wacker, J.A.M.A. 184: 485-489 (May 11),
1963 and had been seen neither by me nor the authors of that article entitled “Medical
Biology: A Perspective”. In the news release, the statement was made “Knowledge of
these investigations led Dr. William B. Castle of Harvard to suggest to Dr. Linus
Pauling of the California Institute of Technology that sickle cell hemoglobin might
have an amino acid composition different from that of normal adult hemoglobin.” Apparently
the text of Dr. Vallee’s article was innocently misinterpreted through the understandable
technical ignorance of the lay author of the publicity release. Although this detail
of the text of the release may never appear in the press, should some newspaper have
printed it, I wanted to let you know that neither the authors of the article nor I
were aware that such a misrepresentation of the facts had been made.
Last January 16, while Dr. Vallee was preparing a lecture in which he wished
to refer to my connection with subsequent investigations of sickle cell hemoglobin,
I wrote him a letter stating my recollection of the circumstances of our conversation
as follows:
“What I do remember clearly was a conversation with Dr. Pauling on a railroad
train while traveling from Denver to Chicago subsequent to this meeting. (? 1946)
Knowing of Paulings work on protein structure, I pointed out to him the possible significance
of the characteristic deformity of the red cells in sickle cell disease, associated,
according to Sherman, with the appearance of birefringence. I suggested that I thought
that this would be a matter of interest to him because to me the phenomenon of birefringence
suggested the occurrence of molecular orientation in the reduced state of these cells.
“As in his Harvey lecture, Pauling has been very gracious on other occasions
in referring to me at all because the essential observations indicating the presence
of an abnormal hemoglobin with respect to its physical behavior on deoxygenation were
clearly stated by Hahn and Gillespie in 1927. Sherman’s observation was made in 1940,
and Ponder in 1948 had demonstrated that osmotically produced “ghosts” deprived of
hemoglobin would not assume the sickle shape upon exposure to low
Dr. Linus Pauling -2- May 22, 1963
oxygen tension. Indeed, he proposed that the intracellular hemoglobin molecules,
when deoxygenated, assumed a “para-crystalline” arrangement. The work of these authors
is duly cited by Pauling in his lecture.”
I know that you are much more interested in the future of biology than in the
past but I would be distressed if the garbled account in the news release should actually
appear and come to your attention without this explanation.
With kind personal regards,
Sincerely yours,
W.B. Castle, M.D.
