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Ridge Institute of Nuclear Studies (ORINS) in order to take their course
on radioisotope techniques and thus qualify to use isotopes in our re
search. Today everyone takes for granted that you learn in your own
institution and get certified there. We had to go to Oak Ridge to get
a certificate after three weeks of training and hands-on work in order to
be able to go back to Bethesda and qualify for using radioisotopes in
our research.
We were able to invite consultants in as well. I stress this because a
brand new program may take some time before one can reach the point
of inviting consultants. We had within the first two years people like
J. Godwin Greenfield (from Queen Square Hospital) in neuropathol
ogy and muscle physiology; and Henry McIlwain (from the University
of London) as the leading neurochemist in Britain and Europe. I like to
think of McIlwain because he worked with Choh-luh Li. Li could make
beautiful microelectrodes, and McIlwain had the apparatus in which to
incubate a slice of brain so that it could be stimulated. All that was neces
sary was to drop the microelectrode into a neuron in that slice of brain
in order to see what the effect of stimulation or change in the ionic
environment might be. They obtained injury potentials from neurons
in these slices–the first such records obtained–and McIlwain went on to
show that he could drain the cell, so to speak, of potassium and then get
the cell to pump the potassium back in again. Thus began a great deal of
work on brain slices that took place later on.
I think the foregoing gives you a flavor of the clinical program and its
broad-ranging activities. I wish it well for the next 50 years. May I conclude
with a quote from my 25th anniversary paper, about where we stood in
1950 as this enterprise began:Consider for a moment the 1950s state of knowledge. My
examples come from areas of my interests and experiences,
but they will suggest many others. At the time the NINDB
was founded our knowledge of the Krebs cycle of inter
mediary metabolism was newly established....The concept
of the mechanism of neuromuscular transmission had just
changed from an electrical to a chemical one, and the