274 KOPIN
allowed physicians who were United States citizens to become
Commissioned Officers in the United States Public Health Service
(PHS), which satisfied the military service obligation. At that time, the
Korean War was in progress and later on, the war in Vietnam. Many
found it preferable to serve their compulsory military service at the
NIH instead of going into the army.
The Visiting Scientist Program for foreign citizens also started at
that time. Georg Hertting from Austria and Shiro Senoh from Japan
were among the first of the Visiting Scientists. Senoh was working in
Bernhard Witkop’s laboratory in the National Institute of Arthritis
and Metabolic Diseases (now the National Institute of Diabetes and
Digestive and Kidney Diseases). When Axelrod needed the O-methy
lated derivative of epinephrine to prove that this compound was formed
from epinephrine, Senoh was assigned the task of synthesizing the
compound, called metanephrine. Three days later, Senoh delivered the
required compound to Axelrod and, using paper chromatography, the
compound that was enzymatically formed from S-Adenosyl-methionine
and epinephrine was shown to be identical to the authentic metaneph
rine synthesized by Senoh.
As explained earlier, paper chromatography was one of the most
important techniques used to study metabolites excreted in urine. Jay
Mann and Elwood LaBrosse were using this method to examine the
urinary excretion of phenolic acids, metabolites of many amines. There
had been several reports of a compound found using paper chroma
tography of excreted urinary metabolites of schizophrenic patients that
was absent in urine from normal subjects. Mann and LaBrosse examined
phenolic acids excreted in the urine from the schizophrenic patients and
the normal subjects housed at the NIH. I remember the initial excite
ment when a spot was found on the chromatograms of urine from al
most all of the schizophrenics, whereas only one of the normals excreted
the compound. The one schizophrenic who did not excrete that com
pound was younger and behaved differently from the other patients.
All, except the one normal subject who excreted the compound, were
Mennonite normal volunteers. The one who excreted the compound
was older and also had different habits than the younger Mennonite
subjects. It was soon determined that the compound in question was