The Healing Lamb

The doctor, the patients and the treatment given at the Clinique Generale la Prairie, overlooking Switzerland's Lake Geneva near Montreux, are all remarkable. The physician is Dr. Paul Niehans, '77 (though he looks more like 60), who declares: "I reject nine out of ten would-be patients. I choose persons who represent a certain value to the world by their individual prominence." Among the chosen have been the late Pope Pius XII and the Imam of Yemen (treated in Rome), the late King Ibn Saud, Painter Georges Braque, Somerset Maugham, Gloria Swanson, the King of Morocco. Most of them received Dr. Niehans' rejuvenation treatment--one or more injections of cells from an unborn lamb.

Whether this constitutes medical magic by a man ahead of his time or dangerous charlatanry is hotly debated. But that it has won fame and fortune for Dr. Niehans there is no doubt. Born in Bern, son of a professor of orthodox medicine, Niehans studied for the Protestant ministry before turning to medicine. He practiced conventional surgery and endocrinology until the late 19205. Then he got interested in transplanting organs from animals to humans. (By no coincidence, this was at the height of the late Serge Voronoff's vogue as a transplanter of monkey testicles.) In 1931 Dr. Niehans had a woman patient whom he rated too ill for a gland transplant. He gave her instead an injection of cells from the ground-up parathyroids of a newborn lamb. Last week, a sprightly 75, she wrote Dr. Niehans from Bern to say that she "never felt better."

Fresh v. Powdered. Dr. Niehans experimented (often on himself) with cell extracts from various organs and glands of several young animals, eventually hit on the unborn Iamb (from a ewe slaughtered just before it is due to deliver) as the best source for most purposes. To ensure a steady supply of fresh, uncontaminated material, he has a veterinarian choose the animals and supervise slaughtering. Of his $120 minimum fee for a single injection, most goes for the raw material, he says, leaving him $30. For aged or debilitated patients, and for doctors elsewhere who want to use the method, Rhein-Chemie in Heidelberg packages dried cells (average cost: $5-$10 a vial). "It's like the difference between fresh milk and powdered milk," explains Dr. Niehans.

It matters little what a patient is suffering from. Dr. Niehans claims cures of dwarfism in children, underdeveloped genitals or breasts, obesity, mongolism, some forms of mental retardation, absence of menstruation, homosexuality, habitual abortion, low (but not high) blood pressure, cirrhosis of the liver, reduced sexual desire, impotence, arteriosclerosis, and some forms of heart disease. Diagnosis and treatment are decided on the basis of a still controversial urinalysis, in which the proportions of certain "ferments" are supposed to show which glands or organs are out of whack.

Dr. Niehans bars the use of cellular injections in patients with infections. Furthermore, he insists, patients get no X rays, diathermy, vaccinations, liquor or tobacco. He makes no claim to have cured cancer, but insists that among the thousands of patients to whom he personally has given 20,000 injections, none have later developed cancer.

Papal Gratitude. Though he has published books outlining his theories and claims of benefit to patients, he offers no precise statistics such as most medical men demand as proof that a treatment works. Although technically in good standing in organized Swiss medicine, he is viewed with suspicion by most Swiss physicians. His greatest following is in Germany, where a connection with the University of Tubingen enables him to use the coveted title "professor."

More controversial even than his method is the part Dr. Niehans played in Pius XII's 1954 illness. His admirers say that his treatment saved the Pope. Detractors argue that he wrongly diagnosed the illness (diaphragmatic hernia) as cancer, and was hustled out of the papal presence. What is certain is that as a reward for whatever he did, Dr. Niehans displays an autographed photograph on which the Pope wrote, in German, high praise of the cellular specialist. And in 1955 the Pope named him to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.

Dr. Niehans modestly denies that he has ever treated (as often reported) the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, or his near neighbor, the aging (70) Charlie Chaplin. Nor, he says, has he personally treated Chancellor Konrad Adenauer or Sir Winston Churchill, but both have had Niehans' cellular injections from other physicians. In the isolation of his palatial home, Dr. Niehans admits that besides the criterion of "individual prominence," he chooses patients who are "most likely to give good response to treatment." This selection may go far to explain why so many are satisfied.

Dr. Niehans asks no fee from ruling princes. But here there is another and more tangible "response to treatment." In his mansion is a priceless silk carpet, 30 ft. square, the gift of an Oriental potentate. The Imam of Yemen gave him a ritual sword in a jewel-studded gold scabbard. In the immense living room are several old masters, including a Van Dyck and a Durer. Most of Dr. Niehans' colleagues are still unconvinced, but his patients appear to be grateful.

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