Machine

Physiologists and physicians made no mockery of a new announcement last week by one Joe H. Pos, civil engineer of Portland, Ore., graduate of the University of Zurich. He said he had constructed an "electric-radio" machine, that regulated blood pressure, whether high or low and he exhibited a box, like a radio receiving-set, of bulbs, coils, condensers, arms, doohickies, thingumbobs, gadgets, gimcracks. On top of the case are two brass arms, one of which constructor Pos points at the back of the patient's head, the other at his stomach--that is, at the medulla and the solar plexus. On goes a current stepped to very high frequency. Patients "have reported no sensation of warmth, of cold; no sensation of any kind." "There were no visible emanations nor was a photographic plate fogged when placed in front of the pointers." Yet for four months various Portland physicians have posed patients before the machine; have noticed blood pressure, in some cases flutter towards normal; have wondered cautiously. Other physicians have studied their pressure charts; have noted that after the first change further variation was negligible; have imputed changes to the resting posture of the patient before the apparatus and to his distraction from his ailments.