Sleepless in Gotham

When Disk Jockey Peter Tripp of Manhattan's radio station WMGM got the idea of going without sleep for 200 hours as a publicity stunt for the March of Dimes, medical science could not have been less interested. But psychiatrists and psychologists were persuaded that the effort might pay off with valuable scientific data--possibly useful all the way to outer space, where an astronaut might have to stay awake a long time. Last week Disk Jockey Tripp finished his insomniac marathon in a warming glow of scientific gratitude for a mountain of data. No man had ever stayed awake so long under intensive medical supervision.*

Although Tripp, 32, is a healthy-looking six-footer at 205 lbs., his interest in the March of Dimes was sharpened when it broadened its appeal to cover congenital defects (TIME, July 21): as a youngster in Detroit, he spent a year on crutches after surgeons put stainless-steel nails in both hips to correct an inborn defect. His endurance contest introduced an unusual carnival element into medical research. After a first check by investigators under the leadership of the University of Oklahoma's Psychiatrist Louis Jolyon West, Tripp was installed in the most public laboratory imaginable: an armed forces recruiting booth in Times Square.

Chamber of Horrors. For more than eight days Tripp was never alone for a moment. He went on the air a dozen times a day to tell his platter-klatsch how he felt. Each evening for three hours he chattered between hit-tune disks. Every few hours his guardian nurses and psychiatrists escorted him across Broadway to the Hotel Astor, where a pseudo French Provincial room ("the chamber of horrors") had been converted into a laboratory. Many of its elaborate electronic gadgets had been borrowed, with a team of psychologists headed by Major Harold Williams, from the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research.

The doctors took blood-pressure, pulse and respiration records, made electrocardiograms and took tracings of Tripp's brain waves. The psychologists put Tripp to work at an instrument panel, told him to punch a button when he recognized various test patterns among the flashing lights. Blood samples were taken regularly from arm or finger, and sent with urine samples to five laboratories for a battery of 40 tests. Tripp was allowed five high-protein meals a day. He had quit smoking, voluntarily gave up sugar. For the first 135 hours he took no stimulants, but then his performance fell off badly and Dr. West put him on Ritalin.

After only three days, Tripp found some things hilariously funny that were not funny at all. He became upset about nothing, showed no reaction when he should have. His perceptions also fogged down. At first he could see objects, such as bolts in window frames, but asked why they were there. Next came illusions: he saw paint specks on a table top, thought they were insects. Hallucinations became progressively more vivid. Early ones were simple octagonal designs; later he saw cobweb patterns (some on the doctors' faces), eventually saw them in 3-D. Tripp saw scurrying phantom mice and kittens.

Spacemen, Beware! Finally Tripp had delusions: he thought the marathon was over, but that the investigators were playing a game with him to keep it running. At one point he imagined he was broadcasting from another building miles away. These changes in mental functioning reminded psychiatrists of breakdowns under sleep deprivation and round-the-clock questioning in Iron Curtain countries. To psychologists thinking of spaceships, his crackup on the lighted-panel tests were a significant warning.

Even when Tripp had triumphantly rounded out his 200 hours, his service to science was not ended. The researchers kept him awake for another hour of tests, taped leads to his head to get brain-wave readings and left them in place when, with eyes bloodshot and skin sallow, he fell asleep. During his 13-hour slumber they also ran electrocardiograms. Leary of the dangers of these stunts, Dr. West had not been able to promise Tripp that there would be no harmful effects. This week, though Tripp seemed outwardly well, he was still getting tests to make sure.

*Such stunts are an occupational disease of disk jockeys. Dave Hunter of WZRO, in Jacksonville, Fla., started two hours before Tripp. With only occasional medical checks, he kept going for 225 hours, but his claim of a world's record was disputed.

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