H3 Book Index:: Chapters 1-29
Ana Aslan was born in Bucharest in 1898. Her first ambition was to be an aviatrix, but her middle-class parents were able to dissuade her. They were not so successful with Ana's second, but perhaps more mature, choice of a life work. When they refused to give her permission to enroll as a medical student, Ana Aslan went on a hunger strike. Four days later her family gave up. In 1924, Ana Aslan received her doctor's degree from the University of Bucharest.
For sixteen years, she was an assistant at the Second Clinic in Bucharest under Prof. D. Danielopolou, whom she reveres as her teacher. She held positions in other hospitals as well, and, except for three years
during the post-war period when she was director of the Clinic in Timisoara, has always remained in the Rumanian capital.
Immediately after World War II, Prof. AsIan learned of a therapy which had been pioneered. by three French physicians, Dos Ghali, Bourdin and Guiot. The doctors had injected novo cain into the cubital vein twice within two hours in an attempt to effect relief in patients suffering from asthmatic attacks, and their method was successful where others had failed. Prof. Aslan found that she, too, could help asthma sufferers with repeated GH3 injections.
Then, in 1948, the noted German physician Prof. Gustav Spiess died. He had been first to discover that novocain not only has value as a local anesthetic, but also has curative power. Prof. Aslan read his obituary in a Rumanian medical journal which noted his former achievements. After checking through the literature, she immediately extended her novocain treatments to include patients with arthritis and limb embolisms, using the method devised by Rene Leriche, which even ;went further than Spiess' original idea. Leriche had advocated the infiltration of 10 to 25 cc of novocain, and was able to restore the affected joint or limb to full activity, often after as few as two treatments. Prof. AsIan, encouraged by her first results with novocaine, began to use it also in cases of arthritis and arthrosis with a tendency toward the fixation of a joint (ankylosis).
The efficacy of the treatment was confirmed in the
very first test:
"G. J., a medical student, came to us with arthritis of the right knee, having had severe pains in his knee for three weeks. After intra-arterial injection of 0.10 g of 1 per cent novocaine, he was immediately able to flex his joint up to 90 degrees."
Before proceeding on a larger scale, she thought it best to experiment with animals. Dr. Selye had already reported a method for inducing experimental arthritis in mice. When a drop of some irritant solution, such as formalin or croton oil, is injected under the skin of the sole into one of the hind paws of a rat, local experimental arthritis develops. First there is acute swelling at the site of injection, and this swelling gradually transforms itself into a chronic arthritis of the many small joints in the paw, and especially of the ankle joint. The rat becomes permanently crippled, because the joints stiffen with hard connective tissue, so that they can no longer be moved.
In the course of her experiments on mice in which arthritis had been induced by a slight modification of
this method, Prof. Aslan and her coworkers at the Parhon Institute of Endocrinology (which Prof. Aslan had joined in 1949) not only found that the novocain had a therapeutic effect-they also observed that the treated animals gained weight, and developed a lustrous fur. Complete cures were achieved in 85 per cent of the affected animals, and resistance to the experimentally induced arthritis was greater in the prophylactically treated animals.
After this series of successful animal experiments, she began treating a group of selected patients between 1949 and 1951. Not all of them were helped, but improvement in many cases was gratifying to the doctors at the Parhon Institute, for they had not achieved really effective results with any other method.
While proceeding with these treatments, Prof. Aslan made a most important observation: the patients, in her own words, "showed a change in the psychological and physical conditions, an improvement in memory, a decrease in rigidity due to Parkinson's disease, and an increase in muscular power." Prof. Aslan then checked through the literature again. She could not find a single reference to any such effect of novocain. However, she had witnessed those changes with a trained, professional eye-the patients appeared younger than before, much more alert, and seemed to be enjoying life again.
Of course, it was possible that some of these changes might be due merely to the cessation of pain, and to the fact that hope had replaced the depression and resignation which had consumed the patients. There was still no proof that any physico-chemical changes were occurring in the bodies of the novocaintreated patients which would not have occurred as the result of a balanced diet, normal regime, and 'tender loving care'.
Professor Aslan then selected 25 of the patients, and for three years treated them with novocain, while all the others continued to receive only gland extracts, vitamins, etc. The apparent greater vitality and improvements in specific diseases of the novocain-treated
: group, as compared to the others, were convincing to the Professor and her co-workers, although they still did not detect any significant physico-chemical changes.
In 1955 she published her findings in the Journal of the Rumanian Academy of Science (Bulletin Sintific Academia Republicii Populare Romime). This paper, entitled "La novocaine, facteur eutrophique et rejeunissant dans le traitement prophilactique et curatifde la viellesse" (Novocain-a eutrophic and rejuvenating factor in the prophylactic and therapeutic treatment of aging), contained a report of her work on the "25 cases."
As might have been expected, her Rumanian colleagues who knew of her work but had not seen its results considered it nothing short of preposterous that she make such fantastic claims. Few non-Rumanian doctors follow the proceedings of the Rumanian Academy, and thus the knowledge of this therapy was confined to its country of origin. But, fortunately, not for long.
Shortly after the Academy report was published, a German journalist traveling through Rumania paid a visit to the Institute, and included a paragraph or two on its work with old people in his articles. Those few sentences attracted the attention of Farbwerke Hoechst, a West German drug firm, which had been the sole manufacturer of novocain in Germany since its discovery. This unsuspected new use for novo cain intrigued the company, which several years before had issued a booklet detailing the therapeutic versatility of this substance. Doctor Horst Weeke, medical director of Farbwerke Hoechst, was sent to Bucharest to investigate the matter. Upon returning to Frankfurt, Dr. Weeke wrote a very positive report on Prof. AsIan's accomplishments. This report was not published, but instead was circulated among some quite important German medical men. As a result, Prf. Aslan received an invitation to attend the Karlsruhe Therapy Congress (one of the best known German medical conclaves) and to read a paper on her discovery.
September 3, 1956 was the date on which Prof.
AsIan faced her first Western audience. The two dozen people listening to the obscure Rumanian doctor were skeptical and filled with incredulity at her tales of the
apparent rejuvenation of old people. The applause she received was thin; indeed, the doubts which hushed the congress could be seen on every face, and some even spoke openly of a "great hoax." The meeting was concluded with the sentiments that Prof. AsIan's remarks did not belong in the program of a reputable medical congress.
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H3 Book Index:: Chapters 1-29
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