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Marconi's many successes have been attributed to his outstanding experimental ability, to his perseverance, to the courage he displayed in the face of numerous and considerable obstacles, to the enthusiasm he instilled in his assistants, and to his capability as an industrialist. All this is true, but it is not the whole story. The effective mobilization of such great human qualities, of so much energy, was possible because Marconi had in mind a clear objective. His goal — one he considered important enough to warrant the devotion of a lifetime's intellectual, moral, and material resources — was the creation of a system: wireless telegraphy.

Muscle biopsies of a 7-week-old girl with profound weakness of all but the ocular muscles, combined with hypotonia, hyporeflexia, hepatomegaly, macroglossia, myopathic electromyogram, and slight elevation of serum enzyme levels revealed mild glycogen and marked lipid and mitochondrial excess. Glycogen structure and anaerobic glycolysis were normal. Aldolase and pyruvate kinase levels were relatively low and the lactic dehydrogenase isoenzyme pattern resembled that of heart muscle. Subsequently the patient had normal intellectual and delayed motor development and her macroglossia disappeared. At 22 months pathologic alterations in muscle were strikingly improved and glycolytic enzyme levels and oxidation of labeled oleic acid and Krebs cycle intermediates were normal. Although still unidentified, the basic metabolic lesion is one that (1) affects mitochondria! morphology, (2) alters lipid and glycogen metabolism, (3) may improve with age, and (4) is compatible with a benign clinical course after early infancy.

Maltase (α-1,4-glucosidase) activity was determined at various pH values in tissues in infantile (heart, liver, skeletal muscle), childhood (heart, liver, skeletal muscle), and adult (liver, skeletal muscle, leukocytes) types of acid maltase deficiency (AMD) and in control tissues. In an infantile case of AMD, only traces of neutral maltase were present in heart, and this activity was significantly decreased in skeletal muscle and liver. In a childhood case of AMD, neutral maltase activity was decreased only in liver. No decreases of neutral maltase occurred in adult AMD tissues. An absolute decrease of leukocyte acid maltase was found in four and a relative decrease in one of five adults with AMD. A decrease in the pH 4.0/pH 6.5 ratio of leukocyte maltase activity may aid in the diagnosis of adult AMD.

Two clinical cases are reported illustrating the rare condition in which the liver does not follow the situs of the right atrium. Both patients had right-sided liver and cardiac apex, a condition usually associated with severe intracardiac defects. Both proved to have mirror-image dextrocardia with normal intracardiac anatomy or correctable lesions (one case). The behavior of the inferior vena cava in these cases is illustrated. Embryologic considerations are presented concerning the hepato-cavo-atrial concordance rule.