(3 of 4)
ROBERT L. RIPLEY New York City
>Odditorium is Ripley's, believe it or not.—ED.
Oh Foul Slander
Sirs: Wait! Since when has your Music editor written your book reviews? In the March 4th issue, under Music (Bach and Boogie-Woogie), he writes of Elliot Paul and makes the remark that he is the author of one good book, The Life and Death of a Spanish Town. Oh foul slander! Has he never heard of Mr. Paul's Concert Pitch, the best damn musical novel I ever read? As an author myself I don't like to see this — Poet Christopher Darlington Morley is not even eligible for membership.—ED. slipping of your department editors into the wrong pews. We can take what you dish out to us in our proper place—but don't let your Music people write so coyly of books, or your Art people write so well on crime (Art Gallery Mystery in the same issue).
Having met Mr. Paul many times at the offices of Random House, our mutual publishers, I can also state that he is not as barrel-shaped as his pictures show. He is really a small man—who, if you must coin an image around, would be keg-shaped.
For a man who is tone deaf, I don't see why I read your Music section anyway.
STEPHEN LONGSTREET Brooklyn, N. Y.
Information
Sirs:
Beaten to publication by one week was your interesting Feb. 26 article concerning the Carville, La. leprosarium. Closely paralleling it was an article in Collier's by Dr. Victor G. Heiser, in which he differed with yours on one highly significant point.
Dr. Heiser relates that a doctor from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem discovered that the Syrian hamster, a type of rodent, could, by inoculation, be made to support the growth of lepra bacilli. In sharp contrast is your statement that: "Since the lepra bacillus will grow in no other animal but man. . . ."
Information please.
R. B. FREUND Chicago, Ill.
>TIME queried President Perry Burgess of the Leonard Wood Memorial for the Eradication of Leprosy. Says he: ". . . Much excitement was created at the Cairo Conference on Leprosy two years ago by the reports and demonstrations which Dr. Saul Adler of the Hebrew University at Jerusalem made with respect to his attempts to transmit human leprosy to a small rodent found in the vicinity of Mt. Ararat and which is called the Syrian hamster.
Dr. Adler was brought to the conference by the Leonard Wood Memorial because of the favorable reports on his work. Following that meeting a number of scientists visited his laboratories in Jerusalem. I believe it is fair to say that the majority of these men looked upon the work, not with entire conviction but open-mindedness. Until other workers are able to duplicate what Dr. Adler hoped he had accomplished, his results cannot be accepted as definite.
I spent much time with him in Jerusalem. He is a careful and conservative scientist. He was aghast at the publicity which had been given to the work he had been doing in his laboratory. There was no scientist who visited him who was more restrained in his opinion as to his results than he.
"So far as I am informed, despite the fact that a number of scientists in various parts of the world have attempted to confirm Dr. Adler's work, only one man feels that he possibly has done so —a French worker, Dr. Etienne Burnet.