A young Medical School professor has developed a fully automatic method for injecting atropine, the only know antidote for deadly "nerve gas," into the bloodstream.

Stanley J. Sarnoff, associate professor of Physiology at the School of Public Health, with the assistance of his wife, Charlotte, and design engineer David M. Potter, experimented with 30 different models of automatic syringes before coming up with a satisfactory model.

The task of finding ways to combat the effects of nerve gas has occupied doctors at the Army Chemical Center, near Baltimore, Md., since the end of world War Two.

During the war, the Germans had perfected a gas which destroys an enzyme called cholinesterase, a substance that ordinarily works as a "brake" for the nervous system. Without this controlling agent, the nerves stimulate the body's muscles into convulsive activity. Severe exposure results in paralysis and eventually death.

The idea of such a gas is not new, as a weaker version has long been used in insecticides. The gas developed by the Germans, however, was far more potent than any produced previously.

Although the Nazis did not use the gas in the last war in fear of reprisal, American military experts are sure that in case of a surprise attack by an aggressor, nerve gas will be used along with atomic or hydrogen bombs in an effort to produce the greatest possible confusion among victims.

Russian Head Start

The Russians enjoyed an initial head start in research on methods both for spreading and fighting the gas. By late 1951, however, America was able to hurt an attacker far more than she could be injured.

In their search for an antidote, Army doctors found atropine, a derivative of belladonna, a deadly poison, in 1947-48. Still, two problems plagued the Army: preventing panic and administering the antidote efficiently in cast of a raid.

Panic prevention was a matter of time and education.

The antidote atropine, however, had to be injected into the blood stream within ten minutes after exposure in order to be effective.

Hypodermics available at the time were complicated, fragile, and expensive, so the Army enlisted many scientists in the search for better injectors.

The Sarnoffs first became interested in the problem in 1951. They rejected the semi-automatic injectors then in use as too cumbersome and complicated, but it took them two years and 31 different models to find a more efficient atropine injector, which they dubbed "The Ace."

Clear from the Start

Sarnoff, in looking back over the two years of research, said that the basic outlines of the device that proved satisfactory were clear from the start.