March 3, 1942

Dr. Thomas Midgley, Jr.

Worthington, Ohio

Dear Dr. Midgley:

Immediately on receiving your letter I went over to the adjoining building and talked about it with Dr. Van Harreveld and Dr. Billig. Dr. Van Harreveld is Associate Professor of Physiology here. I have known him for about ten years, since the time that he came here from Holland. He is a very pleasant young man, and I think that he is a good nerve physiologist. Dr. Billig I have not met before. He has been here only a short while. He is a medical officer in the Navy, detailed here for this work. He received his training at the Stanford Medical School in San Francisco.

I believe that you may take at face value the newspaper report about their work. They discussed it with me in a way which leads me to have confidence in them. So far they have treated only the five people mentioned in the newspaper account. Since the time at which they made their report to the Los Angeles County Medical Association they have been completing arrangements for treating patients. This has involved a considerable amount of preparatory work with hospitals, the California Institute of Technology, the Navy, and the Medical societies all participating. The arrangement is that all correspondence with prospective patients is handled by the Los Angeles chapter of the Infantile Paralysis Foundation, and that Dr. Van Harreveld and Dr. Billig answer letters which they receive from physicians. In one or two cases, involving some personal relationship, dealings with prospective patients are being taken care of directly by Drs. Van Harreveld and Billig. They said that they would like to put you in this category, as a patient or prospective patient brought directly to them by me.

The method of treatment which they use consists in crushing the nerve as close to the affected muscle as possible. After this trauma has been produced the nerve sends out all nerves, which grow toward the muscle at the rate of about 1 millimeter a day. When these new small nerves have reached the muscle, the patient acquires control over it. The first four patients which they treated were treated by surgery, and the fifth by manual injury to the nerve.

Drs. Van Harreveld and Billig feel that you probably provide a good case for their treatment. They think that you now have reached the point where normal treatment would lead to only small further gains, and that this is just the time when their treatment should be applied, that is, some time within the next few months. They believe that they can be of help to you, and suggest that you come out here. They will be available here at any time during the next few months, and in case that the Los Angeles chapter arranging for treatment of patients have filled up their regular schedule, they could run you in on Sundays say so that you would not need to worry about not having an appointment with them. The two young doctors are enthusiastic young men, in their middle thirties. Dr. Max Mason of this Institute, former President of the University of Chicago and of the Rockefeller Foundation, has been exercising some sort of general supervision over their work, not, of course, from the medical side, but from the general administrative side.

I am leaving tomorrow for New York and Washington, and I shall be back on March 25. I hope that you do not come here and go before I am back, because I would like very much to see you and talk with you. You know, perhaps, that for some years I have been getting more and more interested in problems of biology and medicine, and for the last two years have been working on the subject of immunology. Recently Dr. Dan Campbell and I have had great success in that we have been able to manufacture in the laboratory antibodies which are as effective apparently as those manufactured in the animal body. Just last week we succeeded in producing artificially an antiserum against Type III pneumococcus. My interest in medical research has of course been strengthened by the fact that a year ago I was severely stricken by an attack of nephritis, from which I am slowly recovering. I am hoping that we can develop here in Pasadena an institute for fundamental research in medicine, and on my trip east I am looking about for a couple of young men who might be brought here to carry on work on the substances such as renin or hypertensi[o]n which are involved in the production of high blood pressure. It seems to me that this field of medical research is one well worth prosecuting now. I am hoping that if we can get accomplished here several worth while things, such as our production of antibodies in vitro, we may be able to obtain support for the Institute which I have in mind.

I want to repeat to you my opinion that Drs. Van Harreveld and Billig are sensible and apparently reliable men. They say that they would be willing to talk with your doctors over the telephone, but suggest that it might be more satisfactory if your doctors were to write to them, asking any questions that they wish. An account of the work that Van Harreveld and Billig have done is to be published soon in the Medical Journal.

I shall look forward to seeing you in Pasadena. The Huntington Hotel is a good place to stay, and is not far from the Institute. If you need to go to a hospital, I can recommend the Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena. It also is not far from the California Institute.

Please call on me again for anything that I can do for you.

Sincerely yours,

Linus Pauling

LP:jr

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