Man of Aran

Doctors have always had a well-founded suspicion that some mysterious property in the air affects people's health. Many a European surgeon avoids operations on days when the south wind blows (some think hemorrhages and serious clots are more common on those days). In Alpine sanatoriums. tuberculosis patients are said to get worse when a warm, moist wind is blowing. Allergists are sure that hay fever and some other allergic diseases are airborne.

But last week medicos were flabbergasted by a new air theory so highly inflated that it promised to be either one of modern medicine's most soaring sensations --or one of its biggest busts. A group of scientific zealots announced that they had isolated an atmospheric substance (or group of substances--they weren't sure which) that they claim, has a definite effect on disease.

The Way the Wind Blows. The theory is known as "bioclimatics." Its father is Dr. William F. Petersen. famed Chicago pathologist and weather student (TIME. Aug. 2, 1943; March 25, 1946). But its most enthusiastic prophet is a rich, eccentric, globe-trotting Bostonian named Manfred Curry. Dr. Curry (a Munich M.D. is a sportsman of note, a yacht designer, and an authority on aerodynamics.

After long study of how the body is affected by various atmospheric conditions (temperature, humidity, etc.), Curry decided that the health-governing material in air is a mysterious gas he calls "aran." Aran's concentration in the air, Curry computed, varies with the time of day (it is low at night and high in midafternoon, and with the weather (low in warm south winds, high in cool north winds). He is pretty certain that varying the concentration of aran can increase or decrease inflammation, start bleeding, and produce all sorts of spasms.

Every Breath Counts. Do these findings open up a breath-taking new view of medicine and therapy? If Dr. Curry's theory works out, many diseases can be treated by regulating the air that people breathe. It's easy: just send patients to a climate with the right aran content or treat them in aran-conditioned hospitals. Pulmonary T.B.. says Dr. Curry, heals much faster in aran-rich air. He thinks that aran, and the theories developed from it, might also be used in treating schizophrenia, goiter, sterility.

Dr. Curry made a report on his findings last week before the American College of Allergists, in Atlantic City. U.S. doctors kept a firm grip on themselves (though some of their private opinions were unprintable). Pessimists among them feared that the aran theory, whatever its merits, would prove a gold mine for quacks and medical faddists.

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