Volume 100  ·   Issue 09  ·  1987

My memory of Dr. Chung dates back to the summer of 1932, when I first met him at a medical ward round in Peking Union Medical College Hospital. Dr. Chung was then the resident physician of the Department of Medicine. He was shortish in stature, took big strides, looked serious and spoke mandarin with a southern accent and English with an American accent. Later I learned that he was from Meixian County, Guangdong Province. The people from this county had long been known to be industrious, enterprising and adventurous. But Chung was not born in Meixian. His father, a poor peasant, was forced to leave his native land to seek a living abroad. He sailed to the eastern (Partugese) part of Timore Island in the East Indies. Chung was born there in the year 1901. Being poor, he had to do child labor and could not afford to go to school until he was in his teens. A few years later he returned to his native county, Meixian, to attend middle school. Afterwards he was awarded a scholarship to study in the School of Science, Shanghai College. After he graduated, he entered PUMC in 1922 and received an M.D. in 1929. Dr. Chung spent a 4-year residency in different branches of internal medicine in the same institute. He finally chose tropical medicine as his field of specialization. In 1933 he married Dr. Li Yi-zhen in Guangzhou; at their wedding I had the honor of being one of the bestmen.

The susceptibility of Schistosoma japonicum of different developmental stages to praziquantel has been studied by several methods. The results showed that praziquantel was more effective against 3-h old schistosomule (d 0) and 28-day old to 42-day old adult worms (d 28 to d 42), but had no effect on 3-day old to 21-day old schistosomules (d 3 to d 21). Since praziquantel could be excreted and secreted from the skin of mouse after administration, the drug exhibited a prophylactic effect when it was given to the host before infection. The susceptibility of 12-h old to 48-h old schistosomules to praziquantel was much lower than that of 3-h old schistosomule. This difference may be ascribed to varied immuno-reaction on the worm surface within 2 days after infection. Besides, d-21 worms lodging in rabbits with higher specific antibody level could be killed by praziquantel.

An EHF pregnant woman delivered a premature infant with rather typical EHF changes. Anti EHF-IgG was found in the blood of the mother, the umbilicus and the heart of the infant. EHF antigen was detected with labelled and unlabelled monoclonal antibody by direct fluorescent, ABC and PAP immunocytochemical methods. The interstitial tissues of the infant's kidney, lung, placenta and umbilical cord were infiltrated with macrophages together with moderate inflammatory reaction. This demonstrated the transmission of the disease from mother to infant via the placenta and the dissemination of the disease via the macrophage system.

A retrograde investigation of cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection was made in a series of 148 infantile autopsies. Inclusion bodies were found in 10 out of 38 cases (26.3%), in which sections of salivary glands were obtained. The result shows that infantile CMV infection is not rare in China.

244 cervical tissue specimens with different diagnoses were stained for human papillomavirus genus specific antigen by the peroxidase antiperoxidase technique. The positive rates in groups of simple condyloma, dysplasia with condyloma and carcinoma with condyloma were 41.9% (52/124), 35.3% (12/34) and 27.3% (6/22), respectively. The antigen positive nuclei were found in the koilocytes or para-keratosis cells of the upper layers of the epithelium. The severer the condyloma lesions were, the higher the positive rate of the antigen was, reaching as high as 64.7% in the severe group. The koilocytes were found in every section which stained positive for human papillomavirus (HPV) antigen. In view of the coexistence and sequential changing pathomorphological features of condyloma and carcinoma, the results of HPV antigen determination may provide important evidences for further study of the relationship between HPV infection and cervical carcinoma development.

Using Bayes' conditional probability model and computer technology, we made multivariate analysis of 412 consecutive labors and set up an overall in trapartum computer predicting program for obstetricians. In a retrospective study, the computer predicting accuracy rate in the series was 95%, and in another 221 cases 94.12%. In a prospective study of 147 cases, the accuracy rate was 93.88%. Compared with clinical judgement, computer prediction in 102 cases proved to be accurate in 94.12%, 13.73% higher than the figure obtained from an original clinical evaluation. Our study suggests that computer-aided prediction of the outcome of cephalic labor may be of value to obstetricians.

Comparative studies are made on the relative percentages of amino acid content and LDH isozyme by electrophoresis and Slab-PAGE in adult worms of Ascaris lumbricoides, Ascaris suum and Toxocara canis. The results show that there are remarkable differences of Arg and His of 17 amino acids between Toxocara canis and human intestinal ascaris, human biliary ascaris and pig ascaris; there are also obvious differences of band positions of LDH isozyme electrophoretic patterns and band position and amount of slab-PAGE patterns among them, whereas no marked differences are found in these three indices in human intestinal ascaris, human biliary ascaris and pig ascaris.

Mixed function oxidase (MFO) was prepared and analysed for its activity from the mucosa of stomach resected from stomach cancer patients and noncancer ones from counties with different incidences of the disease in Fujian Province, which is a high incidence area of gastric cancer in Southeastern China. MFO activity of nonstomach cancer patients in high and low incidence areas is significantly different (p<0.01). MFO activity in stomach cancer and nonstomach cancer patients is also significantly different. Meanwhile, differences in the contents of gastric mucosa cytochrome p-450 of noncancer patients from high and low incidence areas of stomach cancer and in stomach cancer and noncancer ones are not marked (p>0.05). MFO of human gastric mucosa is capable of metabolizing diethylnitrosamine in vitro.

The concentration of vitamin E in the brains and livers of dam and pup rats with or without vitamin E supplement was determined. The results show: Vitamin E administered during pregnancy can get access to the fetal brain; their blood-brain barriers possess a free permeability to vitamin E; and the premeability is higher in pups than in dams, which implies the development of blood-brain barrier with age.

We studied normal lumbar intervertebral discs of rat, rabbit and man (fetus and adult) by transmission electron microscope. It was found that although the annulus fibrosus was composed of fibrocartilage, the cells in the lacunae of the fibrocartilage showed configuration transition from fibroblasts to notochordal cells. Elastic fibers could be detected in the annulus. Nucleus pulposus contained notochordal cells which may exist singly or in stacks in a loose matrix. In patients with protruding or ruptured lumbar intervertebral discs, the diseased disc material originated from the nucleus pulposus, the superficial stratum of the annulus fibrosus, and the cartilagi nous tissue. Both living and degenerate notochordal cells existed in the nucleus pulposus. In the cartilaginous tissue, chondrocytes showed active secretory function or underwent interstitial growth and degeneration. The cellular component of the superficial stratum of the annulus fibrosus was comprised mainly of living fibrocartilage cells similar to fibroblasts.