Discoverer of Ensol Only 40 Years Old

Young Eye, Ear, Nose and Throat Specialist Throws Over Practice to Conduct Cancer Research – Five Years on Job.

The ranks of the younger men in medicine have again produced an outstanding contribution to scientific research and the unending fight against disease – this time a method of treatment which may lead to a solution of the cancer problem.

Dr. H. C. Connell, discoverer of ensol, passed his 40th birthday barely a month ago. He was only 35 when he first conceived the idea which has led him so far up the research road.

The arresting picture of his discovery is paralleled not only by the fact he is a comparatively young man, but also by his achievement in arriving at his goal unaided except by a still younger laboratory technician. Dr. Connell is generous in stressing the importance of the technician’s contribution in carrying out he detailed laboratory work, but aside from this the entire piece of research was as solo a performance as Lindbergh’s flight to Paris.

First Attempt.

Equally striking is the revelation that this was his first attempt at research work, and that, prior to launching his search for a key to the cancer problem, he had devoted special attention to neither the treatment nor the study of the disease. Until the pressure of the research began to appropriate his every waking hour, and the importance and potentialities of his experiments became more and more definite, he was a successful eye-ear-nose-throat specialist in Kingston. He was forced to give up his by no means unlucrative practice some time ago.

Among other circumstances enhancing in the lay mind the interest of his achievement itself, there is also the limited scope, the almost primitive aspect of the

faculties with which he had to work until a few months ago. Ensol was ready for the tests of the past few months, before Dr. Connell and his assistant were able to move their laboratory out of a small, poorly ventilated and odoriferous attic room in the Queen’s University medical building.

Even now, with larger, better

lighted and more conveniently situated quarters, an even bigger laboratory would not come amiss, and facilities and there is room for improvement in facilities and equipment. Far from complaining, Dr. Connell is glad that he had the facilities he did to make possible the progress he has made, and looks forward only with patience to the day when the value of his discovery may be sufficiently determined to warrant expansion of the mechanism of his research.

Assistance Given.

Nor does he complain of the necessity which has caused the financing of the work to come almost entirely from himself. Rather, he thinks it was “a lucky break” that he happened to have sufficient funds available to ensure continuance of the work though the past few years. From the university has come what assistance it could give in the way of laboratory quarters and equipment. From the Kingston General Hospital has come vitally essential co-operation, the staffing and maintenance of the cancer clinic where ensol treatments have produced such encouraging results.

The whole work is now vested in the newly formed Hendry-Connell Research Foundation, the governing board of which is

to consist of Dr. Connell himself (president), his father, Dr. J. C. Connell, as vice-president; his technician-assistant, B. J. Holsgrove; and three representatives of the university.

Nevertheless, the moving spirit and direct supervisor of the work will continue to be the stocky, solidly built figure of Dr. Connell.

Dr. Connell was born, educated and has lived all his life in Kingston, except for the periods when he was pursuing post-graduate studies at European universities and serving in the post-war campaign in Siberia. After obtaining his preliminary education at Kingston schools, he attended Queen’s University, receiving his B.A. degree in 1915 and his medical degree two years later. He took a general medical course without any special training in research work, the treatment of cancer, or, for that matter, in the eye-ear-nose-throat field in which he later specialized.

Not many months after his graduation, he enrolled himself in the army medical corps and went over-seas with the Canadian-Siberian expeditionary force. He served in an advance medical unit attached to a stationary hospital in Vladivostok until he returned home from Russia in 1920.

For a year or more after that he traveled in Europe, doing post-graduate work at universities and hospitals in London, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Vienna before returning to Kingston again to commence with his father, practicing as an otolaryngologist. His father, one of the most respected members of the profession in Kingston, was dean of the Queen’s University medical faculty for 25 years prior to his retirement in 1929.

In September, 1930, he embarked on painstaking research to devise an artificially produced secretion hostile to cataracts, when infused into the bodily system of the patient. His real inspiration came when it dawned upon him that the principle forming the basis of an element naturally hostile to cataract, might be the long-sought key to the menacing puzzle of cancer.

continued on page 4

HOME

ENSOL

PEOPLE

EVENTS

REPORTS

RESOURCES

CONTACTS