Shock and Circulatory Homeostasis

This is a report of one more Conference, the favorite indoor sport of the medical sciences. In the last paragraph of his introduction, before turning the meeting over to the chairman, the master of ceremonies, Frank Fremont-Smith, says: "Logic is a vital aspect of science, but equally essential is the intuitive or creative aspect.... By preserving the informality of our conferences in the published transactions, we hope to portray more accurately how the minds of scientists work and to give a true picture of the role which creativity plays in scientific research." Noble as this aspiration may be, it was predestined to failure. The dramtatis personnae consisted of 26 experts with as many special interests and varying degrees of skill, experience, and information, of whom 24 were cast in important r6les. This necessitated some kind of formal program. Since, however, all the other participants were permitted, at any moment, to interrupt the speaker who had the floor, the threads of the arguments frequently became confused or utterly lost despite the best efforts of the stage-managing chairman. The cast was too small to warrant a formal program, but altogether too large for informal conversation. The characters of only a few of the most loquacious were revealed to the reading audience. A large proportion of the ad lib questions and remarks were not expressions of profound thought, but dealt with matters of technique. "Sobel: How much vitamin D did you give? Copp: There were 8 units per gram of diet, ... about 50 units daily. Butler: That is a big dose. Sobel: It is a small dose. Harrison: No, it is a large dose. Copp: It is a large dose. Follis: Eight thousand units per kilogram of diet. Copp: Yes; 8,000 units per kilogram, that is right. It contains 8 units per gram; that is a better way of putting it" (p. 149). Such a passage proves only that the members of the Conference differed either in their facility at mental arithmetic at the decimal level or in their standards of magnitude. The "bigs" seem to have won by acclamation or vociferation. Such passages may have lent color to the scene for the spectators; for the reader they serve only to distract attention from the subject. The editor of this Conference seems to have lost his red pencil. The reader is even informed by the term " [Laughter]" what stirs the risibilities of distinguished physiologists. Sophisticated readers who really desire information will find it necessary to turn to the original articles of which the Conference report is a rehash.