Faculty Bibliography

Verapamil is a member of a class of drugs called calcium antagonists, or calcium channel blockers, that many cardiologists believe will offer a new approach to treating angina and other heart disorders. In two of the tests, verapamil reduced the number of anginal attacks and the use of nitroglycerin by 70 percent. Nitroglycerin tablets, which are used to relieve an angina attack when it begins, are often prescribed in conjunction with other drugs. Among patients taking propranolol, there was an 8 percent reduction in anginal attacks and a 20 percent reduction in nitroglycerin usage. Verapamil also lengthened the time that patients could exercise before they felt the onset of anginal pains. Neither the doctors nor the patients knew which pills any patient received at any time in the study. Started With Placebo In the firs t two weeks, all 20 received a placebo, a harmless substance hav ing no medical effect. For the next three weeks, 10 patients rece ived gradually increasing doses of verapamil and the other 10 pati ents received propranolol

He once sat in the emergency room of Kings County Hospital to see how patients were treated. Dr. Kountz's interest in medicine stemmed from an incident when he was a young boy in Lexa, Ark., where he was born. He accompanied an injured friend to the local hospital. Moved by the ability of doctors to ease the friend's suffering, he decided to become a physician. His father, a Baptist minister, and his grandmother, who had been born into slavery, encouraged him. Dr. Kountz discovered that large doses of a drug called methylprednisolone could help reverse the acute rejection of a transplanted kidney. That steroid drug was used for many years in the standard management of kidney transplant patients. Other researchers took advantage of Dr. Kountz's observations and used similar large doses of methylprednisolone in the treatment of many other conditions. When he moved to the University of California in 1967, he worked with other researchers to develop the prototype of a machine that now is able to preserve kidneys for up to 50 hours from the time they are removed from a donor's body. The machine is used worldwide and is named the Belzer kidney perfusion machine in honor of Dr. Kuntz's partner, Dr. Folkert O. Belzer. Urged Donation of Organs

Mr. [William Holden] was ''heavily intoxicated'' when he fell on a rug in his home, cut his head, and bled to death, according to Dr. Thomas T. Noguchi, the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner. The amount of alcohol in his blood was 0.22 percent - far in excess of the 0.10 percent level at which, in California, a person is considered legally under the influence of alcohol. Miss Wood fell from a boat and drowned off Catalina Island. Her blood alcohol was 0.14 percent, the result of drinking about seven glasses of wine during the evening, according to Dr. Noguchi. He speculated that Miss Wood's ''slight level of intoxication'' had been a contributing factor to her death. Even though world alcohol consumption is climbing, the trend is not necessarily irreversible everywhere. A comparative study of per capita alcohol consumption in the United Kingdom from the late 1890's to the early 1930's, for instance, showed a steady drop from a peak of 4.2 gallons to 1.6 gallons. Similar declines have taken place in other fully industrialized nations. The peaks reached in those countries, according to the W.H.O., were at least in part because of social and economic changes of the same kind now under way in many parts of the world

An American expert said in an interview yesterday that ''no beneficial effect'' had been found in follow-up examinations of several patients who had received the therapy in the Soviet Union for the disease, which is called retinitis pigmentosa. ''No beneficial effect'' was found in any of the patients, Dr. [Eliot Berson] said, adding that three of the seven whom he had examined showed ''further deterioration'' that may have reflected either the natural progression of the disease or complications of the therapy itself

The citric acid cycle, now called the [Hans Adolf Krebs] cycle, has colloquially been called ''the wheel of fortune.'' Its scientific name reflects the facts that citric acid is the compound formed at the beginning of the chain reaction and that the whole process can revolve in a cycle and start over. Dr. Krebs found that one amino acid, ornithine, catalyzed the synthesis of urea in the liver, and for that reason the urea cycle is also called the ornithine cycle. Dr. Krebs also determined that the intermediate stages in urea synthesis involved three amino acids: ornithine, citrulline and arginine. During World War II, Dr. Krebs helped organize nutritional research on vitamins A and C and other foods. He moved to Oxford in 1954. In recent years, among other projects, Dr. Krebs explored ways to preserve livers for longer periods from removal to transplantation to other humans and studied certain diseases known as ''inborn errors of metabolism.''

On learning of his nomination, [Sigmund Freud] said that although the prize money would be welcomed, the efforts would be in vain: ''It is only too certain that I shall not get any Nobel Prize. Psychoanalysis has several good enemies among the authorities on whom the bestowal depends.'' The literary prize that year went to Eugene O'Neill. That point was made by H.S. Reiss, head of the German department at the University of Bristol in England, in commenting on Dr. [Elias Canetti]'s Nobel. Dr. Canetti's scientific training ''is reflected in the precision and clarity of his writing,'' Dr. Reiss said. There is also a popularity wave of science writing. Carl Sagan's ''Cosmos'' led the best seller lists. There are science book clubs. There is a trend for more scientists to write more books about science, which shows that at least some have managed to rise above their antiliterary training - unless they have hired ghost writers

''Dietary questionnaires designed for more general purposes'' Dr. [R. Peto] and his colleagues wrote, happened to ask about how respondents obtained carotene. Only later was it realized, the researchers said, that ''the lower cancer risks found among users of this particular foodstuff might be due to its beta-carotene content.'' The Western Electric study indicated that the dietary variable linked to lung cancer rates was beta-carotene and not Vitamin A. The researchers said that the ''long follow-up period suggested that below-average intake of carotene preceded the carcinoma and was not a consequence of it.'' Methods Called 'Crude' The researchers also noted that the dietary survey methods used in their own and previous studies were ''crude'' and had problems with reliability and validity

Three doctors who have compressed obstructions in the coronary arteries of more than 1,100 patients have the longest experience with the technique. They are Dr. Andreas Gruntzig, who devised the technique at the University of Zurich and now works at Emory University in Atlanta; Dr. Simon H. Stertzer at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York; and Dr. Richard K. Myler at St. Mary's Hospital in San Francisco. As Dr. Stertzer scrubbed his arms before beginning the procedure, he told a visiting physician: ''In anyone's first 75 cases, the complication rate is on the high side and the success rate on the low side. Now my complication rate is decreasing and my success rate increasing.'' Dr. Stertzer worked patiently, but in a moment of frustration, he commented that the balloon tube ''almost always goes where you don't want it to go.''

The German press has reported that the need for the pacemaker resulted from Mr. Schmidt's suffering Stokes-Adams attacks - bouts of unconsciousness due to a complete block of the heart's normal electrical system. Although patients often recover from individual bouts without permanent damage, they can recur. Sometimes, however,a single bout can produce a stroke or sudden death. Several West German doctors who were not connected with Mr. Schmidt's case said in interviews that the confusion about the Chancellor's state of health was a frequent topic of conversation in hospital dining rooms. These physicians said they believed Mr. [Helmut Schmidt] had a duty to answer several questions, including these: ''This subject is closed and will never be opened to the media,'' an aide to Mr. Schmidt said, implying that the Chancellor is healthy. Most likely he is. Yet, the question lingers: If he is fine, why withhold the supporting facts?

Nevertheless, Dr. [Barbara McClintock] said that she had persisted in her research because she knew she was ''going in the right direction'' and that ''sooner or later I would be all right.'' The honors are a belated recognition of her research. The ''monumental implications'' of her fundamental discovery were ''not fully appreciated until years later by the scientific community,'' the Lasker citation said