Symposium on ACTH and cortisone in diseases of the chest.

I would like to have the members of the panel come up and sit on the platform. I will introduce the members of the panel and then we will talk about the program. Reading from me on the left, Dr. Laurance Kinsell of San Francisco; Dr. John Mote of Philadelphia; Dr. Smith Freeman of Chicago; Dr. Maurice Segal of Boston; and batting for Dr. Carlisle, who unfortunately was taken ill in Puerto Rico, we have the great good fortune to have Dr. Al Barach. As you know, ACTH and cortisone have been discussed as much or more in the lay press than in scientific journals. Our patients know more about it than we do, and are sure that It will cure almost everything. Consequently, this subject is something that we are expected to know a great deal about. However, it is much too early to have much exact knowledge. We are finding that some of the concepts of the old clinicians of the last century about the body’s reaction to disease are being corroborated on a truly physiologic basis since this work was started. I am going to start by asking Dr. Smith Freeman to tell us what ACTH and Cortisone are and what may be the relationship of these substances to the functioning of the body In health and in disease. Dr. Freeman: ACTH is a polypeptide that is liberated by the