Notes

Quail Stuffers. To fatten quail for market, Italian and Polish gaveurs (bird stuffers) work in Paris market-hall cellars, chewing up grain and fruit into a pap which they let the quail eat from their mouths. The pecking quail abrade the gaveurs' lips, noses, chins. The peckmarks become infected, ulcerated; the gaveurs are miserable, sometimes die. ... So reported the Journal of the American Medical Association, ever on the alert for new occupational diseases.

Zonite Flayed. Makers of Zonite, chlorine disinfectant popular with women, recommend it for dandruff, wounds, ulcerations, pimples, boils, eruptions, sinus troubles, sore throat, noxious body odors, halitosis, and various other conditions. The Government decided that this was saying too much for a solution of sodium hypochlorite yielding approximately 1 % of available chlorine. Zonite was declared misbranded. Its merits as an antiseptic for some conditions are tacitly admitted.

Transoceanic Ophthalmoscopy. The travelers far from home need not feel entirely at the mercy of foreign doctors, even if their ailment is something requiring microscopic examination. One Ernestino Dodd of Buenos Aires was in Berlin when his eyes went bad. A photograph of his retina was radioed 7,200 mi. to his own, trusted specialist, who within the hour called back advising his Patient Dodd to have an operation immediately.

Pinoleum Million. So long ago that the trade name has become a common proprietary, a Dr. Bryan D. Sheedy, nose & throat man, mixed menthol, camphor, oil of eucalyptus, oil of Ceylon cinnamon and pine-needle oil in liquid petroleum and called his preparation pinoleum. He formed a corporation, the Pinoleum Co., which in recent years despite sharp competition by Standard Oil and others, has averaged $60,902 annual profits. Dr. Sheedy died three years ago. Last week his estate appraised at $1,263,684.

Heart Probe. At the Auguste Viktoria Hospital, Eberswalde, Germany, a Dr. Forssmann, assistant surgeon, opened a vein at his elbow and into it worked a long, soft rubber probe through the circuitous passages to his heart. Then he walked to the hospital X-ray machine to prove his accomplishment. Similar stunts have often been performed on experimental animals. The therapeutical value of such practices is not yet known, but Dr. Forssmann thinks that such probing can introduce certain medicaments directly to the heart better than the blood will carry them there.

Esophageal Auscultation. Announcement by Dr. Samuel Bondi, professor of internal medicine at the University of Vienna, that he was regularly shoving a small stethoscope down the throats of his heart patients, revived attention in such esophageal auscultation. The heart is closer to the esophagus than to any other reachable part of the body. Hence its sound can be heard most clearly through the esophagus wall. But to gain extra clearness at the cost of a patient's comfort is something that few doctors will do.