[A few paragraph breaks added for ease of reading.]Address until about May 20, probably
Claremont Inn
Claremont, California
March 30, 1941Dear friends,
It seems quite a long time since I hace [sic] sent you a letter because I have seen a good deal, much more than in most of my year. That is because my back is much better and I can do the travelling which I could not do last fall, also my interest rises as I feel better.
First I'll give you a little scientific paragraph, for there have been two spells when I felt for a bit in my own environment, and I will confess it was rather comforting. I called on Professor Deuel of the University of Southern California, head of biochemistry in their medical school. This is a private institution of several thousand students, with a standard which is rising, and this man is helping up his department notably. The medical library is the best in L.A. and I hope to get there for a few days of reading, possibly one this next week as transportation favors. He showed me around his department, crowded and busy, with most interesting work going on. It has been found that shark's livers are very rich in vitamin A, hundreds of times as rich as cod livers, for instance. No vitamin D, probably associated with the fact that there is no bony skeleton. The sharks on this coast as [sic] many and large and they are being used to supply A now.
It occurred to Professor Deuel to feed this extract - a cheap variety - to Guernsey cows to see if the milk could be jacked up. An extract containing A and D both had been tried, but the extra D was harmful to the cows. The extra A seemed not to harm them, the milk went up in quantity and in cream content, with a higher A value, as desired, but there was a flaw - the yellow Guernsey cream (yellow because of its containing carotene, which is allied to Vitamin A) became all but pure white, and the carotene disappeared. That is no loss if the A is higher, because we can make A out of carotene, but folks do not wish their cream to be white! He is now goign to feed the extract to Holstein cows which have a nearly white cream anyhow, and very little of it. The possibilities look very interesting ....
It has been found that when starving experiments are carried on the fat metabolism is upset, as shown by ketone bodies in the urine, and it is interesting that this comes on more rapidly and to greater extent in women than in men, likewise in the females of rabbits, and now Professor Deuel and his group have found the same for rats. Rats could not be used for this work previously but he prepares them by giving them fatty livers by high fat feeding before the starvation, and then they act just like the other species. It is desirable to know more about fat metabolism, already known that some fats of unusual composition are not fully taken to pieces apparently when given in large quantities. The simpler fats such as a butyrin in butter have been thought to be taken to pieces more com pletely. [sic] He is following the changes by sticking some heavy hydrogen into the fats he feeds and then examining his animals (rats) which have been made high in liver fat previously. He thinks there will be a difference in the behavior of the fats of different composition, and the tests are just now going on. ....
A lecture by Professor Dam was given at U.S.C. and I timed my return to Los Angeles so as to hit it. He is Danish, I knew him slightly, and he has discovered Vitamin K, the one which helps to further the clotting of the blood when this is needed. He gave a splendid lecture to the Sigma Xi group and got the story to the place where it has been shown that K fed to expectant mothers will help to control the infantile hemorrhages which are so much dreaded. I went to a fine dinner party for the Dams, who came last fall to this country by way of Petsamo, a voyage full of danger.
Professor Deuel has in his department a most delightful young man named Mills who has worked with Cohn of Harvard on the proteins. He has a Tiselius apparatus, which I had read of but never seen, cost roughly $1,000, so I shall not buy one, but I surely would like to stick the blood sera of the fishes into it! It could answer some of my questions, I am sure. This work is being done in the grand new building, dedicated this fall, where a board of governors decides the use to which the rooms shall be put, expensive set-ups, now in one science now in another. It is the Hancock Laboratory, and Hancock is a typical California product, rich no end, interested in science, particularly from the collecting standpoint, owns sea-going boats and is himself a master-mariner as well as an oil magnate. He collects this and that in the South Seas and then the working up is done in this new building. One amusing thing is the incorporation into the building of his family home, marble staircase, pipe organ - he is a musician and there is chamber music in which he plays the cello (?) weekly or often in his old home. But the home does not show in this building - it has a shell around it to match the rest of the laboratory. I never saw a more beautiful building, made just as one really wants it, and most flexible, so that the work done can change as the most important problems appear.
Public Health. I went up to Bakersfield to see Myrnie Gifford, '15, and found her the head of the Health division, under a man who runs all the hospital and health stuff of the county. This is Kern County, fourth richest in California, as big as Massachusetts, rich in oil fields (nobody worries about the oil's giving out for the old wells are still going and new ones are dug all the time, they go now down to 13,000 feet or more), mines over to the east but I did not see them, much grazing land with great ranches of thousands of acres, irrigation for grapes, especially table grapes, potatoes, and many crops. It is a county which has had many of the migrant workers who create such difficult problems, especially health problems. In Myrnie's department there are over 50 persons versus 8 when she came 10 years ago. The work is much divided, rural sanitation; schools; dental clinics which travel in trailers and made-over busses with much educational work; nutrition in the schools especially for these very ppoor migrants who have so little to eat - they are using the surplus foods extensively in these lunches; well-baby and school nursing as well as the usual public health work; extensive vaccination for small-pox, diphtheria, whooping cough; the study of a local disease coccidiodomycosis as prevalent as tuberculosis and though not as fatal yet sometimes with most serious and fatal complications, called familiarly San Joaquin fever. I saw a well-baby clinic and was much impressed by the skill Myrnie and the nurse showed in managing the problems of intelligent and ignorant mothers, instruction and actual training in psychiatry included. I saw several of the migrant camps, the awful ones and those now being made by WPA projects and local enterprise, most impressive. Oh yes, the ground squirrel squad, three men travelling with guns and shooting as many as possible, dissecting them for the finding of plague, carried by these little beasts which seem to be useless in the general scheme of nature here. They are finding very little plague now. There was a county conference with several from the state board present and with many demonstrations, so I saw a lot. It seemed to me very enterprising and energetic, I got quite excited.
I've made three trips to see the sights, particularly the spring flowers. One was by bus from San Diego to ElCentro, over mountains which gradually became more and more desert-like, and then we came into the irrigated Imperial valley with miles of blue fields of flax, with all the vegetables, many fruits, and so on. Lots of fresh strawberries in the market now from there. Then I went on to Palm Springs which has one lovely site. It is a mess of miscellaneous folks, but nevertheless one can see much there. I went to Palm Canyon, where last August some careless picnickers started a fire which swept through this best stand of native palms in the whole country, and burned miles and miles of mountain side. The palms are coming out now, they did not look so bad to me as to the folks who knew them before - they have lost their skirts, those old dead leaves which hang around the trunks and which you have to get used to - I'm not so fond of them even now. I saw a sign which said, "Next town 65 miles" and it was all desert but there were two or three filling stations. I saw the date gardens in Indio and bought a pound of assorted kinds, some sell for as high as 75 cents a pound, but I like the drier ones better. I saw the Salton Sea stretching for miles in its valley, and we were below sea level for probably a hundred miles or so. It was not plain sand, however, for the desert has a large population of plants and they are perfectly fascinating to me. I counted up in my book last night and I think I really have identified 75 kinds, and there are near to 25 more which I have looked at carefully and put down with question marks. They have such interesting characteristics, of course the cacti, but all are protected against water loss some way. A corollary of this is that they wilt much less easily than most wild flowers one picks.
Palm Springs, to go back to that, is in an Indian reservation in part, and the original springs are still run by or for Indians. There is a little church, too, and a ceremonial hut where it is said they dance at times. They are not an enterprising tribe, Cahuillas. Another thing was an old ruined adobe, once a stop on the old Butterfield stage route. The history of this part of the world has so many picturesque aspects, not the least being the gradual establishment of communications, including the stage period. Another thing at Bakersfield which is well north of the native palm belt was the presence of long avenues of palms here and there, the only indication of the coming of a group of English settlers who hoped for great things, but did not know about irrigation and so their rather fine ranches went to glory save for the palms which still stand there on the plain.
From Palm Springs I came on to Banning, no desert at all, but in a mountain pass, snow mountains 10,000 - 11,800 feet on both sides, with orchards of almonds in flower, pink drifts of blossoms, such a contrast to the desert. Then down to Riverside, a wealthy town in the citrus belt, where there was a Mission Play which told the story of the Missions very vividly - I could tell quite a lot about that!
On the Bakersfield trip I saw miles and miles of flowers, a sight one can never forget, misty blue and purple in all shades as we came in the bus from crossing the mountains to the middle plain, perhaps some 20,000 acres of lupines, all land which has never been ploughed! It is grazing country, but the cattle don't show much! There were many other flowers - I was taken on four trips to various places to see the different combinations, but nothing was equal to those stretches of lupines. It was a day of mixed sun and shade which helped the effect. Every flower was new to me - even the lupines are not just like ours, and there are several species of them. I hope I have some pictures but they are not developed yet. Another alumna, Dorothy Camp Nourse, lives in Bakersfield, and her husband is the head of the board which has to do with the choosing of the cotton seed, another of the very important crops of that county.
These last few days I have been with Grace Berry and brother and Ruth Humphries on a four day motor trip to another region, partly crossing my other trip, but mostly different. We went to a little town, Hemet, where there was a nice hotel, named Alessandro, for this is the Ramona country. This was built more or less like the Indian Pueblos, most amusing. We went on over the "Pines to Palms Highway", up to 5,000 feet or so, with just elegant pines and then down across the burned section above Palm Canyon where we fell in with a lone man who had a sign out, "INFORMATION - We know a lot of answers", and he surely did. His little place with two cabins to rent was saved from the fire by back-firing and he sure has no use for those picnickers who set the thing. He has one tree of the pinon variety, pine nuts, needles only one at a place.
The second night we spent in Morongo Valley at a little camp - everything is a ranch or a motel here - with several cotages and a central house. It was different, informal, the proprietor had a fly swatter at hand all the time and his aim was that of a sharp-shooter, whether the fly were on Mr. Berry's bald head or the edge of the salt cellar. He always removed the corpse! He really was not as bad as that sounds, but though the house was fully screened, those flies did get in and they have a nasty prick. The folks were mostly getting sun tan, with a minimum of clothes, but they were not a bad sort. The food was excellent. This was real desert, miles from anywhere except that all the roads are good and the trucks go everywhere. We went on through the Joshua trees, now in bloom, giant branched yuccas of most weird appearance, oh, I liked those trees! The clusters of blossoms are at the end of the branches and each cluster may be one to two feet or even more high, lovely creamy white blossoms. Of course I took their picture - but that desert light is queer.
We went about 40 miles or so, perhaps half of it with these trees near us, and then came to Twenty-nine Palms, originally an oasis, now an ambitious desert settlement. Of the original oasis there is a mud hole and a run which is moist for perhaps a quarter of a mile, and 16 palms, but there are new ones starting, very thrifty. There are some three good hotels and many more motels. We stayed at a nice place, La Hacienda, where we had rooms with shower baths and electric lights, hot and cold water. We ate at a friendly restaurant about a mile away, and spent two days looking at that desert. It is not blowing sand, but rather a hard floor, though your feet seem to go through a sort of crust, not sinking in but just cracking the surface. On this are spaced comfortably all sorts of bushes and little plants. I kept an eye open for rattlesnakes - I think they are there - but I saw none. I did see many lizards and two horned toads. There were many flowers not more than an inch high, like those that grow on the mountain hights which I have enjoyed so much. One place had a lovely carpet of three colors, deep red-pink, yellow, white. Even a few feet of elevation seems to make a difference in the flora and they are in good societies. The last place we went to was very dry indeed and there were the rarest things we saw, the desert lilies, stems 20 - 24 inches high, several lilies on a stalk, with long crinkly leaves lying on the sand, flowers almost as large as Easterlilies, white with a green band on each petal, perfectly exquisite. They rose from what looked like just plain grey-white sand, coarse and making this crust I spoke of. There were any number of them, not close together, but many in sight at once. I'll remember them as long as the purple lights on the lupines.
Don't you think I have been having a good time? There is a possibility of one more desert trip perhaps two weeks from now, but it is not sure. It might take us to Death Valley and farther east than I have been. The day we came home we drove from the desert right along into the lush citrus belt, with orchards of peaches all lovely pink, and the heavy fragrance of blossoming oranges and grapefruit.
I'm living now at the Claremont Inn, a very pleasant place, where I have a room which is not just a transient abode. I shall unpack my trunk - when I get to it! That was done only once, when the thing was fixed in January. Now I plan to go north again to see Carmel and Yosemite, but the flowers at the latter place are not out until June at the higher level, and I want to go there. Being so near San Francisco, I think I shall go there, too, and call on my friends all around, also go to see a distant relative who has turned up, and then come back here to start east perhaps along mid June. There will be stops in Colorado I think - there might be a flower there and I'd hate to miss it. That would get me home along in the summer, time uncertain, possibly early enough to work a little just for a change, maybe at Woods Hole. It is uncertain yet.
With my love to you all,
Abby H. Turner