George Crile

CRILE, George (born in 1864), is one of the most prominent American surgeons of the present time. Among his works, the largest collections of clinical material in the world occupy a significant place; suffice it to say that in Cleveland (Ohio) he has performed more than twenty thousand operations for goiter, besides carrying out a number of other extremely complex operations. Such work is possible only thanks to the extraordinary rationalization of labor in his institution, which can only be compared with the organization of work in Ford's factories (Yudin). Another of Crile's achievements is the scientific development of the question of blood transfusion. Crile was the first to introduce a new principle for selecting the donor and recipient based on the data of the doctrine of isohemoagglutination, simplified the technique of vascular suture by using cannulas, thanks to which this method has now become widely used ("Haemorrhage a. transfusion, an experimental a. clinical research", N. Y.—L., 1909). A number of Crile's works are devoted to the study of surgical shock. A summary of these works is given in the book "A physical interpretation of shock" (L., 1921). Being a brilliant practical surgeon, Crile also devotes much time to the study of problems of a general biological nature. Among such works of his, the book "A bipolar theory of living processes" (N. Y., 1926), published by him in 1926, should be noted; it caused a sensation in America and provoked persecution of the author for his materialistic direction. In this book, however, Crile is very far from modern (dialectical) materialism. He is a consistent vulgar mechanist and sees in all life processes only the manifestation of the action of electromolecular forces; the living does not differ in essence from the non-living, and the practical difference consists in the fact that living matter possesses a mechanism for transforming perceived chemical compounds into higher and more complex compounds. The cause of vital processes is potential difference. The plasma itself, constructed from a mass of fibers with a nucleus and inclusions, represents an ideal apparatus for the manifestation of electrical phenomena. The water of the cell, occupying ³/₄ of the cell by volume, possesses the highest dielectric constant known to us. This property of water leads to the ionization of an infinite number of molecules soluble in water; the electrical solutions that make up the bulk of the cell are specially adapted to electrochemical processes. Hydrogen ions penetrate all living organisms. The slightest change in concentration fundamentally alters the organism. Carbohydrates are a source of hydrogen ions under the action of oxidizing agents. Crile sees the "bipolarity" of vital phenomena in the forms of connection of individual organs with each other. Among such organs connected with each other, according to Crile, belong, for example, the brain and the liver. This connection is expressed in the fact that nerve cells have neither neutral fat, nor glucose, nor acid-neutralizing material. But all these materials accumulate in the liver for the brain and other tissues. In experiments, liver tissue is much more sensitive than the brain. The chemical composition of the liver is also allegedly in agreement with the bipolar theory, namely: while a large amount of mineral substances is concentrated in it, the plasma of nerve cells has extremely few of them. All these considerations in favor of "bipolarity" can hardly be considered well-founded. A number of Crile's works have been published in the Journal of the American Medical Association and in the Annals of Surgery.