All of them wanted to know why the doctor asked, and some of them laughed at him; but that was all right, he thought, it didn’t mean a thing. Everyone knew that old Doc had some strange ideas, like the time when he had raised so much hell about the water from the old municipal well that a new one had to be drilled, or the time of his strict insistence, as the town’s health officer, that all garbage cans must be covered. Old Doc, everyone agreed, was a fuddy-duddy; but they loved the man and went along with his craziness.
He hung up the phone after his last call and stared at the pad on which he had made notes as he made the calls.
This could be it, he thought; enzymes and DDT. Was it possible that a coenzyme, by forming a bond with a molecule of DDT, had become a super-catalyst? And now that DDT was no longer available, the super-catalytic action was no longer possible. That, he told himself, could account for the symptoms of the exhaustion syndrome.
Take coenzyme A, the one so intimately tied up with two biochemical cycles—the fatty-acid cycle, for example, which operates to oxidize lipids. Deprived of the super-catalyst on which the people had come to depend, fewer lipids would be oxidized and more would be stored as fat. Thus, an increasing incidence of obesity. With fewer lipids being broken down, the body would have to depend almost totally on carbohydrates for energy. Thus, the need for between-meal snacks.
Carbohydrates are transformed into useful body energy by means of the citric-acid cycle and the glycolysis process. The citric-acid cycle also involved coenzyme A, while the glycolysis process did not. if the two processes should become irregular, a seesawing effect, where one effect took over when the other faltered, and vice versa, could have far-reaching consequences. The blood sugar level would become erratic, a great deal produced at one time, very little at another. Lactic acid production would rise when the citric-acid cycle slowed down, since one of the functions of the cycle was to break down lactic acid. One result of a rise in lactic acid would be sore and aching muscles. And, in addition to the variation in blood sugar levels, the production of insulin also would be erratic. As a result of both conditions, there would be times when the brain would starve for lack of glucose in the blood. The symptoms would vary from fainting spells, convulsions, and shock to grogginess, irritability, and bleary vision.
It fit! he realized. It all fit, perhaps too perfectly.
He felt a moment of panic and distrust. He was going at it wrong, he knew. He was working with deduction. There should be extensive laboratory testing. But he was not qualified for laboratory work of the caliber required. He was going on a hunch alone, with no real evidence. His conclusions were unscientific and medically unacceptable. But the pattern was there, all logically laid out.
It was logical, he told himself, not only physiologically, but in other ways as well. It made sense evolutionally. Under the pressure of modern living, man was burning up more energy than he ever had before. Perhaps it was possible he had outrun the biochemical functioning of his body. Under such a circumstance, the body, as an evolutionary life system, would use anything available to permit it to function more efficiently. If DDT were something that would help it to do a better job, if DDT made the enzymes or even one enzyme into a super-catalyst that would do a better job, the body unhesitantly would latch onto DDT.
But now that the DDT was gone, the human body had gone back to where it was before. Among those people to whom DDT had not been available, the hill people for example, the old non-DDT system was still functioning, perhaps not as efficiently as if DDT had been available, but at least not disturbed by having become a new system which had operated successfully for a time but now was lost. Those whose bodies had become accustomed to the DDT system now were suffering a reaction—the old non-DDT system was sluggish in recovering, if it ever could recover, its old efficiency.
Someone other than himself, he knew, should look into the situation. But to look into it would take staff and money. Perhaps it was time that he got in touch with Abbott, not waiting for Abbott to get back to him. Then he realized he did not know how to get in touch with Abbott. The writer had left no address or phone number, probably because he had expected to be traveling and for a time would have no permanent base of operation.
The best approach, Benton decided, was to phone Abbott’s publisher. Someone at the publishing house undoubtedly would know how to go about reaching him. But it was Saturday and publishing houses, he suspected, would be closed. He would do it the first thing Monday morning, recognizing even as he thought, that his urgency was motivated by his wish to shift the problem of the exhaustion syndrome off his back. He had done the thinking and had gone as far as he could go; now it was time for someone other than himself to take over.
Maybe research would prove that his deductions were wrong. Right or wrong, however, some effort, he was convinced, should be made to find the truth.
He phoned first thing Monday morning.
He identified himself and said, “I was hoping someone on your staff could tell me how to get in touch with Robert Abbott. He came to see me several months ago and it’s rather important that I speak with him.”
The woman who had answered hesitated for a moment; when she spoke, she sounded slightly flustered. “Just a moment, sir,” she said.
A man came on the line. “You were asking about Abbott.”
“Yes. It’s important that I reach him.”
“Doctor,” the man asked, “don’t you ever see a paper?”
“I’m ordinarily too busy,” said Benton. “I simply glance at headlines. At times not even that.”
“Then you don’t know that Abbott’s dead.”
“Dead!”
“Yes, a couple of weeks ago. A highway crash somewhere in Colorado.”
Benton said nothing.
“It was a shock to all of us,” said the man in New York. “You say you knew him.”
“I didn’t really know him. He visited me a few months ago. We talked an hour or so. I assume you know what he was working on.”
“No, we don’t. We’ve often wondered. We knew he was onto something, but he was closemouthed about it. You may know a great deal more than we do.”
“Not a great deal,” Benton said. “Thank you very much. I hope I did not disturb you.”
“Not at all. Thanks for calling. I’m sorry I had such bad news for you.”
Benton hung up and stared blankly at the office wall, not seeing the fly-specked diploma that had hung there so long. What do I do now? he asked himself. Just what in hell do I do now?
The first hard frost had come the night before and there was a sharp chill in the air the day Lem Jackson came into the office. Jackson was one of the hill people, a tall, gangling man who appeared to be forty years or so of age. Benton knew who he was, but could not recall that he had ever been a patient.
Jackson sat down in a chair opposite the desk and dropped his shapeless, battered hat upon the carpeting.
“Maybe, Doc,” he said, “I’ve done wrong in coming and taking up your time. But I feel all dragged out. I ain’t worth a hoot. I am not myself. Seems like I’m tired all the time, and my muscles are sore. Most days I’m so ornery and feel so mean that I’m ashamed of myself, the way I treat the wife and kids.”
“How about your appetite?” Benton asked. “You been eating well?”
“All the time. Can’t seem to get filled up. I’m hungry all the time.”