Part One – There
(Eastern Hemisphere)
CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN – SRITO. PATHOLOGY
My work in the pathology lab began with getting acquainted with samples from the local cabinet of curiosities. Unlike the human exhibits in the laboratory of system-technique, these were giant sarcomas of various bones, including the skull, placed in huge jars filled with formaldehyde. This makeshift museum had tables for processing samples, large sinks and water taps. Here I could and did carry out some measurements and experiments on tubular bones.
In another, large room, employees (all women) sat at separate tables with microscopes and looked at the prepared glass slides. From time to time, they looked up from the eyepieces and prepared new slides for a new study.
Finally, the third room was the head of the laboratory office, where I was given a seat at a table adjacent to the boss’s massive table. The boss was a sweet, intelligent woman from a very wealthy family, which sheltered a refugee from Moldova during the WWII, namely Zhenya’s mother.
Now I was sheltered in approximately the same way, although no one understood why me, who had nothing to do with pathological anatomy, was assigned here? However, no one felt stingy for the table. In the rare hours when the head of the laboratory was in her office, she signed various documents accumulated on her table, looked at controversial microscope slides through her Zeiss microscope, and chatted with me about the prospects of science. She had no interest in me as a physics teacher for her adult children and young grandchildren.
Taking advantage of my relative independence, I began to read literature on regeneration. To do this, it was not necessary to sit in the laboratory, inhaling fumes of formaldehyde, and I started myself an attendance register, where I wrote down the libraries and the hours of my work in them.
I didn’t use any tricks and didn’t steal time. On the contrary, I sat over through this time, and if I came across an interesting article, I tried to finish it that same day, so as not to put off the journals for the next day. They were fresh and everyone wanted them.
I returned to the Institute only for general meetings and events, following Chichiko’s advice not to get into trouble with my nihilism. But even at these meetings I read my literature from the SRITO library. I kept journals everywhere, like winter supplies of squirrels, hidden in all convenient places. When it was hot, I often crossed the street and went to read in an empty Catholic cathedral, where it was much cooler. The pastor already knew me, we always greeted each other politely. I remember one funny incident that happened there.
The head of the Italian government, it seems, Mr. Andreotti, came to Georgia. And, unlike the socialist leaders, he decided to go to the Catholic cathedral. Although everything was done without noise or fanfare, the limousines on the small street caused a stir, and spectators began to gather. Mainly they were patients from the adjacent Institute of Traumatology, who were able to walk. Imagine a crowd of unshaven men gathered at the stairs of the cathedral, in gray stained hospital gowns, on crutches, in dirty plaster casts. Typical crippled beggars, from paintings by Bosch. And Andreotti behaved appropriately – he ordered the distribution of alms – one ruble a person. Patients didn’t hesitate, they took money. But then police shouted, and had driven beggars away. Oh, how they fled on crutches! However, the case did not have any administrative consequences. Entry and exit from the hospital, thanks to God, was still allowed.
Over six months of intensive reading, I gained extensive knowledge about the processes of tissue regeneration (I was interested in bone tissue) and, most importantly, stimulation of regeneration. It was my time to get into the game. What did this mean? To find your own direction of research and start experiments. Alas, my entire research staff consisted of one young brain, ready to fight for the victory of science. There was no talk of any subtle molecular research; it was necessary to try to join the international stream of efforts to heal the bone faster than nature did, influencing healing with various physical agents – electric and magnetic fields. Periodicals, especially American ones, were replete with such articles. One thing was unclear to me – what if I change the value of an electrical current or another parameter? How will this affect the acceleration of the process, which already seemed unconvincing to me?
The first thing that had to be measured was the properties of the object, that is, the electrical resistance of the bones to electric current. I decided to measure it in vitro – in an experiment on animal bones and also – in vivo, on patients during operations.
For in vitro tests, I needed bones, and I wrote a letter to the city meat-processing plant with a request to allocate two kilograms of fresh cattle bones for scientific purposes to the junior researcher of the SRITO, Neiman N.V.
Chichiko signed the letter without looking, and I headed to the trip.
I rode the tram for about an hour until I reached the outskirts of the city, stinking of carcasses, blood and garbage, where a huge meat processing plant was located.
“Where to?” the guard at the gate stopped me, looking suspiciously at my foam thermostat container, which looked like a huge round cake box.
I extracted a letter with a seal from SRITO,
“For bones, for…”
The watchman did not care.
“To the administration!” he pointed his finger towards a two-story building on the territory behind the fence.
In the administration, by using the key words “science” and “bones,” I was quickly transferred to the deputy director, who was just about to leave for the district committee of party. He ran his eyes over my paper, nodded approvingly and, without saying a word, put a resolution on it diagonally,
“Release to the document submitter the necessary goods at a wholesale price,” and then shouted to the secretary, “Tell Vakhushti to serve the guy!” and said to me, “Good luck, Neiman. You know the way. Come on in,” and he ran away.
About ten minutes later, the huge Vakhushti appeared in a floor-length apron, smeared from head to toe with dried and fresh blood.
The secretary nodded at me,
“The master said, give Neiman whatever he asks for.”
Vakhushti looked at me respectfully and nodded his head abruptly,
“Let’s go!”
We went out into the yard of the meat processing plant. I, embarrassed that I hadn’t really explained anything to anyone, began to reveal,
“We need cattle bones for experiments. Two kilograms.”
Vakhushti laughed,
“Hey, Neiman! That’s well done! Where is your car?”
“What car?”
“To take out goods! Meat, liver, brains, tenderloin. The master said – anything is permitted.”
Only now it dawned on me that no one, including the deputy director, believes in my sincere intentions to remove only two kilograms of filthy bones of “cattle” from the protected area of the total deficit.
A lousy piece of paper, tapped with one finger on a typewriter with sticky keys, suddenly acquired the status of paiza or ausweis in the territory, if not enemies, then certainly not friends of the meat-starved Soviet people.
“Thank you, Vakhushti. I told the truth, I need only two kilograms of bones.”
He immediately frowned.
“What are you, a communist (he did not mean a party member, but a crystal honest person) or a believer?”
“I do science. I want to learn how to heal bones of patients faster. And for the experiments, I need only two kilograms of …”
“Got it, got it! Horned large animals bones. Stay here, I’ll bring it now.”
Vakhushti picked up my plastic foam container and returned about ten minutes later, carrying it at outstretched arms.
“Look, these are suitable?”
He placed the container on the ground and opened the lid. Inside, in dense rows, like cigarettes in a cigarette case, lay the sawed-off bones of some animals, obviously large and horned.
“How much should I pay?” I asked.
Vakhushti grimaced as if from a lemon.
“Do you know what the wholesale price of bones is? A kilogram is two kopecks. Like a condom. Should I charge you four kopecks? Or two condoms?” he laughed and extended his huge paw to me goodbye,
“Come on, science, bring benefits to people!” and shouted to the watchman,
“Hey, Arseniy, let the guy with the bones through, this is our man.”
With tension, I had carried the heavy box up to the tram, and then to the house, suspecting that the warm-hearted Vakhushti had stuffed it with bones worth not four, but forty kopecks, but I was wrong. Under a row of bones were two bags of beef tenderloin and liver. Mom had a hard time believing my story, but I knew that the universal mind, in the form of the warm-hearted swindler from the meatpacking plant, approved of my research.
After some time, I started experiments at SRITO. The library stage was over – I was aware of all the latest articles and research. In the language of candidates for a PhD degree, this was called collecting the necessary information. The most important thing was the experimental part. First I wanted to measure the resistance of the bones. And I did it. It turned out that bones in vitro dry out and become insulators, that is, they do not conduct electricity at all, like porcelain. In vivo, that is, during surgery, on the contrary, moistened with blood, they sharply drop resistance. I remember how much trouble it took to infiltrate the operating room team and force the operating room nurses to place my steel electrodes with Teflon-insulated wires that could withstand any sterilization on the table with instruments. Everything new and unusual does not take root immediately, but the director’s son still studied physics with me, and a green street was open to me.
“Hey, Science, come over!” the surgeons shouted cheerfully, giving me a place at the operating table.
As a result, I began to suspect that many of the numbers in the experiments, including exemplary American works, were taken from the air and did not reflect any physical pattern. Let me explain. If one researcher passed a direct current of 5 milliamps through a fracture and received a callus on average two days earlier and 1.2 times stronger than in the control group, and another with an alternating current of 17 microamps (this is not an error, yes, in a thousand times less!) received a callus three days earlier and the same strength as in the control group, what does this tell you?
To me, especially after years and familiarity with the American grant system, this says more about the ability of researchers to raise money than about understanding, much less managing the complex molecular processes of substance transfer.
In Soviet articles, researchers generally used God knows what stimulation methods. They placed rabbits with broken paws under a magnet, irradiated them with ultrasound or ultraviolet light. And everyone caught something, and almost-almost succeeded, but, for one reason or another, it fell off like an unprecedented fish from the fishing line of a fisherman who loves unusual stories.
And yet, despite my growing suspicion of the articles, I had to try to find at least some rational link in all this activity, and I made a couple of trips to see the researchers, get acquainted and talk with them informally.
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