How Are Your Eosinophils?

Before & after the Yale-Harvard boat race at New London last year, a professional-looking fellow stepped up to each member of the Harvard crew, including the coxswain, pricked the lobe of one ear and drew a single drop of blood. He was Dr. Albert E. Renold, research fellow at Harvard Medical School, popularly known to the boys as Dr. Vampire.

No vampire, Renold was one of a team which was testing the oarsmen's reactions to stress. Dr. George W. Thorn (TIME, May 21) acted on the theory that in a normal, healthy reaction to physical or emotional stress the adrenal cortex is stimulated. It then puts out more hormones, which (among other effects) cut down the number of eosinophils (a type of white cell) circulating in the blood. Thus a series of before & after eosinophil counts might show whether a man's reaction to stress is normal.

Renold took random samples when there was no stress, got an average eosinophil index of 123 for the varsity crew. After a practice pull, the oarsmen's eosinophil average dropped to 19. When the day of the Yale race came, the counts were down to an average of 64 before anybody had lifted an oar. The coxswain's was down to 33.

It was a grueling race over four miles; Harvard won in the last seconds by a quarter of a length. The eosinophil average at race's end: three for both oarsmen and cox. Harvard Coach Tom Bolles' own eosinophil drop: from 101 before the race to six after.

A crew of Harvard scrubs provided an interesting comparison: the rowers were nervous before the race, with a count of only 42, but they led the Yale scrubs easily all the way, won by six lengths, and had a relaxed after-race count of 59.

By the Thorn thesis, all the Harvard-men showed a "healthy" response to stress; eosinophil counts showed a drop proportionate to exhaustion. If an exhausted man's count had failed to show a drop of 50% or more, Thorn would have regarded it as a sign that the adrenal cortex was not producing the extra hormones which the body demands under stress.

The Harvard testers believe that their technique can be adapted to measure a man's aptitude for dangerous, "stressful" assignments of many kinds, e.g., commando duty. Men who become exhausted after a rugged route march, but without a proportionate eosinophil drop, would be eliminated as dangerously hormone poor.

The Harvard experimenters, reporting their findings in the New England Journal of Medicine, conclude: "We wish to express our appreciation of the good-humored cooperation of the Harvard crews."

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