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Nicholas Senn was born in the canton St. Gaul, Switzerland, October 31, 1844. In 1852 he came with his parents to the United States, settling in the frontier town of Ashford, Wisconsin. Following graduation from the regional high school, he taught in the local country school for two years. He attended Northwestern University and, in 1865, entered the Chicago Medical College, at the completion of which he won the competitive examination for residency in the Cook County Hospital.He began to practice medicine in the small town of Elmore, Wisconsin, in 1872. In 1877 he traveled to Munich, Germany, and spent a year studying bacteriology, which resulted in the publication of a book on this subject. It must be remembered that Lister's paper on the antiseptic treatment of wounds was published only a few years earlier (1867).Returning to Milwaukee, he was called to the chair in surgery at the College of Physicians and Surgeons in Chicago. He commuted approximately 90 miles to deliver lectures and conduct his clinics twice weekly. In 1888 he became professor of surgical pathology at Rush Medical College.His contributions to surgery were numerous and will be alluded to in subsequent issues. However, I have selected an article by Senn that is not innovative, but which gives a lucid description of the state of intestinal suturing at the end of the 19th century. The paper will be published in three installments, as described by the author: ancient methods, modern methods, and recent techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lignans are natural products formed by oxidative dimerization of monomeric phenols. A few were recently discovered in human and animal urine, semen and blood plasma but their role has never been assessed. We investigated the actions of mammalian lignans obtained by total synthesis or extracted from the urine of pregnant women, on the Na+K+-pump in human red cells. Some of the tested lignans (enterolactone, prestegane B and 3-O-methylenterolactone) inhibited the Na+K+-pump activity with IC50 ranging from 5 to 9 X 10(-4) mol/l. The IC50 for ouabain (7 X 10(-7) mol/l) was not modified by addition of lignans suggesting a non-competitive inhibition.