In Washington

In Washington the American Medical Association met for its 78th annual convention. Discussions and accomplishments:

President Coolidge. Many were the murmurs of concern that hummed from a vast throng of medical men and their families, gathered in a penetrating rain on the White House lawn. President Coolidge was to greet them; but the miserable weather might cause aggravation of the bad cold that had kept him confined to bed the fore part of the week. There was talk of dissuading him from the ceremony. However, the rigor of the weather did not deter the President. He appeared, bundled in a great raincoat, wearing sensible rubbers. Beside him posed Mrs. Coolidge, hale, gracious, benign.

Whiskey Test. To the University of Cincinnati came 300 volunteers who drank good whiskey and then let their alcoholized breaths pass through a solution of 50% sulphuric acid containing a trace (1/3%) of potassium dichromate. This solution is ordinarily reddish yellow; alcohol vapor makes it change to a bluish green. The more whiskey the Cincinnati bibbers swallowed and the more drunk they became, the more bluish green became the solution. There is so definite a relation between degree of intoxication and the sulphuric acid-potassium dichromate tint, that Cincinnati judges have used its evidence in arrests for driving motor cars while drunk.--Dr. Emil Bogen, University of Cincinnati.

Whiskey Protest. " Attention has previously been called to numerous arbitrary restrictions imposed on the medical profession by unnecessary restrictive enforcement regulations regarding medicinal agents. I need only mention the statement on the back of a recent issue of the Volstead prescription book: i. e., 'You are personally responsible for this book. It will not be replaced if lost and failure to properly safeguard it will result in revocation of your permit.' Such a statement may be characterized only as insulting to an honored profession."--Wendell C. Phillips, retiring President of the A. M. A.

Insomnia. "The sick and nervous are slow in getting to sleep and are helped most by the rest they get between 5 and 9 o'clock in the morning. . . . Something can often be done for insomnia by teaching the patient to keep his mind off disturbing thoughts, to avoid mental work or exciting conversations after dinner, to take a warm bath and a little food on retiring and to go to bed earlier. . . . The less the patient sleeps one night, the less he is able to sleep the next, and the only thing that will break the vicious circle is a sedative drug. . . . Morphine is a good pain reliever, but a poor sleep maker. . . . The newer synthetics [drugs] have no relation to morphine; they have none of that kick that makes the taker wish to repeat the experience. . . ."--Walter C. Alvarez of Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn.

Diabetes. Charts of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. and of the U. S. Department of the Interior showed that during 1923 and 1924 the death rates due to diabetes were 10% less than for 1922 when Drs. Banting and MacLeod discovered insulin and hailed it as a specific treatment, although no sure cure, for diabetes. Since 1924 the diabetes death rate has, increased rapidly. No doctor knows why.

Trachoma is a very contagious eye disease. The inner sides of the lids become sore and granulated; blindness often results. Up to last week the cause had been uncertain. Then Hideyo Noguchi, Japanese, famed biologist of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, revealed how he had caused the disease in his laboratory by using an evasive microorganism he had trapped in the blood of trachoma victims. The A. M. A. gave him a silver medal.

Cosmetics. "The cosmetic business has been a perfectly reputable business, but in the absence of a law controlling it [the Pure Food & Drug Act is not specific enough] a number of scamps have crept into the business." Some hair dyes irritate the skin dangerously; others contain poisonous lead. Some freckle removers contain ammoniated mercury, a caustic poison that eats the skin. If a substance is powerful enough to dissolve hair, it is powerful enough to dissolve skin. Using the x-ray to remove hair may cause cancer. The A. M. A. is seeking laws to "forbid the sale of certain dangerous poisons as ingredients of cosmetics and to compel all makers of cosmetics to make truthful representations of their products."--Arthur J. Cramp, sharp-tongued, ruthless quack-killer and nostrum-chaser for the A. M. A., compiler of the Association's reference book, Nostrums & Quackery.

Tattooing. Women, and men too, who have had their cheeks tattooed a permanent pink and their lips scarred into a stiff cupid's bow have become problems to the physician. The needles with which the tattooer punctures his customer's flesh are often unsterilized, the dyes that he soaks into the needle-pits polluted. Frequent results: gangrene, tetanus (lockjaw), leprosy, amputation, tuberculosis, blood poisoning.--Marvin D. Shie of Cleveland.

Small Babies. If the gestating mother exercises and thus herself uses up considerable of the extra food she eats during her term, her baby is apt to be small and healthy, her delivery easy.--Effa V. Davis of Chicago Maternity Hospital.

Officers. When Wendell C. Phillips assumed the presidency of the A. M. A. at Dallas, Tex., last year, he urged that doctors give some of their time to teaching the public the prevention of disease. So doctors were more willing than ever, the past year, to explain medical problems to laymen, newspapers.

The program of President Jabez N. Jackson of Kansas City, Mo., who took office at Washington last week, will be to have every medical student put through a course of medical ethics to teach him the idealism of his profession, the art of applying his science to human needs, and fit counterblasts to the hordes of medical cultists.*

William Sydney Thayer of Johns Hopkins University, last week elected A. M. A. president for 1928-29, had no program to declare. He knew, however, that during his term as president of the A. M. A. will come the national campaign for U. S. Presidency, that Republican, Democratic and independent politicians will badger him for support. The president of the A. M. A. is chief of 94,000 of the 150,000 physicians and surgeons in the U. S. His favor is potent in nation affairs.

The Journal. To the amazement of the doctors the May 21 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, reporting some of the convention speeches, arrived at Washington while the convention was still going on. How could Editor-Dr. Morris Fishbein get 92,000 copies of this 142-page magazine printed, bound and mailed so speedily? No mystery, pure industry was the explanation. All but 16 of the pages (containing advertisements, technical reports, medical news, synopses of articles in other medical journals, and the doctors' joke column "Tonics and Sedatives") were printed long before the convention. Also in advance was set the type for all but five of the late 16 pages. Convention speeches, as they were delivered, went into those five pages. Thereafter speed depended on sharp coordination in the Journal's printing plant. Such editing and publishing haste always engenders errors, yet the May 21 issue of the Journal had surprisingly few errors.

*Two books related to medical cults have recently appeared: New Medical Follies by Editor-Dr. Morris Fishbein (published by Boni & Liveright--$2) ; These Cults by Journalist Annie Riley Hale (published by National Health Foundation--$2). Dr. Fishbein, editor of A. M. A. magazines, flays the cults with smart invective and occasionally twisted logic. Mrs. Hale defends them more sedately and with frequently false premises.