Rita Levi-Montalcini: Discoverer of nerve growth factor by Lisa Yount

By Lisa Yount

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Even though her life had returned to an appearance of normality, however, Levi-Montalcini had trouble recapturing the enthusiasm that had sustained her during the first part of the war. In July 1946, Levi surprised Levi-Montalcini by calling her into his office. He had a letter for her, he said, from none other than Years in Hiding 41 Viktor Hamburger, the scientist whose work she had duplicated— and questioned—in her “Robinson Crusoe” laboratory. Hamburger had read the paper describing her experiments, and he now invited her to come to Washington University and repeat the experiments with him.

Levi-Montalcini’s family heard the news on their radio that evening in Asti. The next morning, when Rita boarded the train into Turin, she found people laughing, crying, embracing one another, and throwing their Fascist badges in the air. She was happy to join in their rejoicing. The bad times were over at last—or so it seemed. 3 Years in Hiding I n fact, for Rita Levi-Montalcini’s family and the other Jews of Italy, the worst part of the nightmare was just beginning. German troops were already gathering on Italy’s northern border when Mussolini resigned.

She learned later that the germs had been brought in through contaminated drinking water. Antibiotics able to control the disease would arrive a mere few months later, but at the time, Levi-Montalcini had no effective medicine to offer. She was ordered merely to identify victims of the epidemic as quickly as possible and send them to the local hospital. Doctors there tried to treat the sick people by deliberately giving them fevers, which was thought to increase their bodies’ resistance to the bacteria, but this treatment seldom worked, and many of the people died.

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