Slowly, he climbed to the top of a nearby boulder. The sky was stained red with sunset, just as it was every night, and the red was reflected in the river, so that the water looked like blood. He put his right hand to his mouth and began to call Semary.
At first his call was quiet and directed to her. Then life began to return fully to his veins, and he looked down at the mighty creature that he—he, alone!—had destroyed. Triumph filled him. Ignoring the ache, he raised his left hand too to his open mouth, and began a series of whooping calls that spread out across the valley. Louder and louder they grew, and more piercing. His lungs were inspired.
Nor did he stop when Semary ran into the clearing and stood to marvel at the defeated beast.
The world should know his prowess! It was a mighty tabletop victory.
The time to decide who is going to manufacture and market synthetic life is now. . . . The curse of most great scientific discoveries is man’s failure to plan ahead for their sensible application. There is no excuse for repeating that mistake in the matter of synthetic life. We have ample notice that science is trying to produce it, reasonable expectations that it will succeed, and plenty of precedents to suggest the problems that this success will create.
This sounds like the sort of thing that makes them keep saying science is catching up with science fiction. Actually, it is Russell Baker, keeping his usual jump ahead of both science and fiction from the vantage point of The Observer.
What level of intelligence must the manufacturer maintain in a synthetic man? The Federal Communications Commission permits television to conform to the twelve-year-old mind, which the industry presumes to be the national norm. Should the government require the synthetic-man industry to maintain a twelve-year-old intelligence level in its product?
Among the probable problems he surveys (color, sex, obsolescence, governmental controls, etc.) he does not seem to anticipate any trouble with the churches, and perhaps—between the ecumenical trend in religion and the metaphysical direction of scientific philosophy – there need be none. Possibly the churches (especially the more puritanical sects?) will accept a new process for an old product —man-made man—as eagerly as they welcomed the archaeological work that uncovered the Dead Sea Scrolls?
In any case, I feel there is a sincere effort being made on both sides: as witness Dr. Tschirgi’s report, from the pages of a scientific journal whose fearless reopening of the evolution controversy a few years ago (discussed in the 9th Annual) should certainly establish it as a suitable medium for the consideration of religio-scientific matters.
Dr. Tschirgi appends the following note to his paper: Several years ago, on the flattering but faulty assumption that I possessed some sort of expertise in fluid and electrolyte physiology, I was invited to be a guest discussant by the UCLA Medical Society for a series of scholarly case histories on the “salt-saving syndrome.” This was a gracious attempt by the clinicians to recognize the unlikely chance that a physiologist might make a small but effective contribution to clinical pathology. At least it was felt that, what with Supreme Court concern over discriminatory practices and civil rights, such a comradely invitation might help to avert a menacing demonstration and boycott by the basic scientists. Having foolishly agreed to this exposure, I soon realized that I must either withdraw ignominiously or prepare some pseudo-erudite presentation with which to uphold the honor of Physiology.
TITLE: A SINGULAR CASE OF EXTREME ELECTROLYTE BALANCE ASSOCIATED WITH FOLIE A DEUX
[Reproduced from Worm Runner’s Digest, 1965, VII, 2 (78-79).]
AUTHOR: ROBERT D. TSCHIRGI
University Dean of Academic Planning University of California, Berkeley, California
The Case of L. W.
Chief Complaint (obtained from husband): Sudden collapse during cross-country hike.
Present Illness: This approximately forty-year-old, well-developed, well-nourished Caucasian female, a refugee housewife of Mediterranean extraction, was D.O.A., accompanied by her husband and two daughters aged twenty and twenty-one. The patient’s history was obtained from her husband, who was somewhat incoherent and appeared to be a latent schizophrenic with delusions of grandeur.
The family had been moderately successful sheepherders along the eastern Mediterranean seaboard, and no previous history of electrolyte balance could be elicited. However, descriptions of strange nocturnal behavior by the uncle-in-law of the deceased might represent a tendency toward mental instability in the husband’s family. During a sheep drive several weeks before the patient’s death, her husband and his uncle quarreled over the disposition of some of the sheep, and they separated with the husband apparently harboring paranoid delusions.
The acute onset of the patient’s terminal disease was inextricably woven into a bizarre hallucinatory episode of her husband, during which he described voices and visions warning him of impending disaster. His behavior during this episode was sufficiently irrational to arouse the neighbors, who attempted to calm the disturbed man by humoring him and offering to dispose of the visions by forcibly ejecting them from his house. Rather than allaying his fears, this served only to aggravate his paranoia, and he forced his wife and two daughters to leave their home and accompany him in a rigorous cross-country flight, during which the patient developed the acute and fatal episode of her disease.
The patient had delivered two normal pregnancies at home, with no history of edema or toxicity. She had at no time complained of excessive thirst, and was apparently free of symptoms until the fatal, fulminating attack. Very little family history was obtainable, but no similar condition was known on either her paternal or maternal side.
Psychologically, the patient appears to have been completely dominated by her husband and his uncle, and to have become so submerged in her husband’s mental aberrations that she began to share his hallucinations and delusions. This transference to her husband of an unresolved Electra complex may well have been the psychosomatic basis for the altered adrenocortical physiology which seems to have been responsible for her terminal disease. We cannot, of course, eliminate the possibility of a libidinous attraction towards her uncle-in-law, who, no doubt, represented the more masculine father figure. This multifaceted ambivalence and superego-id conflict resulted in schizoid withdrawal and an attachment to mysticism centered around her husband’s psychotic manifestations. Indeed, the subsequent history of her two daughters who were seen in their third trimester, having become pregnant incestuously, indicates the pervasive and malignant nature of this psychiatric problem.
At autopsy, the primary findings were those characteristic of right heart success, recently described by Assali as “tissue drought,” and attributed by him to vagus imbalance causing the heart to beat counter-clockwise. The tissues were dehydrated and friable, and the sodium and chloride content of the body fluids was extremely elevated. The adrenal glands were hypertrophied bilaterally, and histologic examination revealed marked hyperplasia of cortical cells.
Final Diagnosis: This is believed to be a unique case of acute, fulminating salt-saving syndrome resulting from a primary hypertrophy of the adrenal cortices. There can be little doubt that chronic psychosomatic forces interacted with a genetic predisposition to generate the constellation of pathologic factors involved in this remarkable case. The suddenness of onset of the final illness, the rapidly downward and fatal course, and the absence of previous symptoms lead one to suspect that the emotional shock to the patient of seeing her home destroyed minutes after her escape with her family produced an overwhelming hyper-adrenalcorticism.