To Nirvana with Miltown

The white caterpillar was 60 ft. long and it wriggled. Startled visitors to San Francisco's A.M.A. convention came face to face with the critter in the Civic Auditorium's new subterranean "Mole Hall." Every few seconds the caterpillar's double-hulled sides made of parachute silk heaved in simulation of caterpillar motion (achieved with the aid of a huge air-blowing system). The monster, which stole the show among 285 commercially sponsored exhibits, was Surrealist Salvador Dali's unrealistic idea of tranquillity executed for Wallace Laboratories to promote Miltown. Estimated total cost of the exhibit: $100,000, including a $35,000 fee for Artist Dali.

Untranquilizing as was the heaving exterior, the interior was still more disturbing. What most visitors saw first walking through the caterpillar's insides was the figure of a gaunt man with porthole-sized gaps in his anatomy, holding a staff topped with a mostly black butterfly. This, said Dali in an explanatory blurb, "portrays human anxiety." Next on the way "toward a harmonious tranquillity" came a diaphanous female figure with a winged-egg head, who carried a staff with a crepuscular moth. The third figure was what Dali called "the true butterfly of tranquillity"--a maiden in yellow, with a head composed of blue, red and yellow flowers. For a finale, there was another maiden (with real hair) skipping rope on the way to the promised land of tranquillity.

Painter Dali called his creation Crisalida and explained in his notes: "The outer structure of Miltown is that of a chrysalis, maximum symbol of the vital nirvana which paves the way for the dazzling dawn of the butterfly, in its turn the symbol of the human soul." Any resemblance between Miltown and a chrysalis, doctors agreed, was confined to Dali's fancy. Still, the word chrysalis is derived from the Greek for gold, and no matter how untranquilizing Dali's work might be, as an attention-getter it was worth its weight in gold to Miltown.

Almost as arresting as the nirvana caterpillar was a weird, 12-ft. high representation of the cell, basic unit of life, presented by Kalamazoo's Upjohn Co. Its shell was a fantastic latticework of clear plastic tubes. Inside were equally ingenious, sausage-shaped plastic gadgets representing mitochondria and fat globules. There was also a gaudy red nucleus, like a gang of tortured octopuses outdoing Laocooen's serpents, with centrosomes that made it look as though it had just landed from outer space.

The cell was built with the help of Manhattan Designer Will Burtin, longtime art consultant for Upjohn and amateur scientist. The exhibit (cost: about $75,000) was already in demand for future showings. Its complex biochemistry, representing the consensus of several leading cytologists, was too deep for most visiting physicians and probably understood only by other cytologists. But its ingenuity was vastly admired. One elderly physician stood in awe of the huge cell for a while, then said in a dry Missouri twang: "It'll never work."

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