Re: Help requested
Dr. Valenstein: I assume you have already read the account of Loewi's arrest, the campaign for his release, and the subsequent attempts to secure him an academic position on pp. 385 - 392 of the second volume of the Wolfe, Barger, Benison biography of Cannon (Elin L. Wolfe, A. Clifford Barger, and Saul Benison, Walter B. Cannon, Science, and Society, 2001). These pages mention Cannon writing members of the American Physiological Society about Loewi in an effort to secure Loewi's release through the U. S. State Department. If I am reading the chronology correctly, Loewi was arrested in March 1938, released in May 1938, and told to leave Austria by the end of 1938; the Congress was held AFTER Loewi's release from prison. There is only the mention that Loewi was not allowed to attend the Zurich Congress, but nothing about a petition (and would one be necessary since Loewi had been released?; perhaps a petition because he was not allowed to attend?). In any case, Cannon did not attend the Zurich Congress because of health problems, but this of course does not rule out the possibility of some kind of petition orchestrated by Cannon and Dale. If the petition exists, I suspect a copy would be in the Dale-Cannon correspondence at Harvard. George Joseph Yale University