Meetings

For the next two months it will be hard to find many an important doctor in his office. He will very likely be busy with the perennial series of medical conventions which ends with the American Medical Association at Atlantic City in mid-June, and which began last week with the American College of Physicians in St. Louis, the American Physiological Society in Memphis, the American Physical Education Association in Manhattan. Speakers produced a broad miscellany of useful information to add to the sum of man's knowledge about his mortal envelope. Items: Physicians

Hope for Hearts. When germs get into the lining of the heart and cause bacterial endocarditis, doctors promptly give up hope because they believe very few patients recover. Last week Dr. Louis Ham-man of Baltimore advised them not to despair in such cases. Reasons: in his autopsy work he frequently sees hearts scarred by infections, such as scarlet fever, incurred years before death.

Tuberculosis Never Cured? One of the most animated controversies in tuberculosis work is over the origin of tuberculosis in adult life. Is it a new infection or is it a flare-up of disease contracted in childhood and long quiescent? Dr. Henry C. Sweany of Chicago, after autopsying 700 patients whose life-long histories he knew, was convinced that in about half of the adults who die of tuberculosis, the childhood infection flared up. In the other half, a secondary infection developed because immunity lapsed.

Boston Beriberi. In Boston Drs. Soma Weiss & Robert W. Wilkins found numerous "alcoholics, diabetics, food cranks and pregnant women" who suffered from "rapid heart rate, enlarged heart, shortness of breath, attacks of asthma." Their skins were usually warm and red. These people were "especially prone to develop broncho-pneumonia." They suffered, the Boston doctors decided with astonishment, from beriberi, a disease due to malnutrition. It is common in the Orient, especially in Java, had never before been recognized in the U. S. Cure: vitamin B1.

Physiologists

Internists. Dr. Walter Lawrence Bierring of Des Moines, regent of the Physicians, 1934 president of the A. M. A., revealed that a newly formed American Board of Internal Medicine is examining the applications of 1,000 practicing physicians who want to call themselves Internists, or specialists in internal diseases.

Enemas of soapy water are much more effective than enemas of mineral oil, determined Harry F. Adler. E. L. Borkon & R, D. Templeton of Chicago.

Pneumonia Treatment. By hypodermic injection of a substance called deutero-proteose. Dr. Clyde Brook of New Orleans, reduced his death rate in both lobar and bronchopneumonia.

Breakfasts & Vigor. New Haven's Professor Howard Haggard claims that people have a much higher muscular efficiency after eating breakfast than in the fasting state. Last week Atlanta's John Haldi & associates said that eating breakfast has no effect on vigor.

Grasshoppers "contain considerable quantities of vitamin A and are also rich in vitamin B-1," said Dr. David I. Macht of Baltimore.

Ovulation Detector. Boston's J. Reboul & associates confirmed the work of New Haven's Professor Harold S. Burr (TIME, Nov. 23), that ovulation and therefore susceptibility to impregnation changes the electrical characteristics of a woman's body. This change may be detected by means of an expensive device full of vacuum tubes, called a potentiometer.

Prostates Shrunk. Before an embryo develops enough to reveal sex it contains a primitive genital gland and ridge, and a supply of both male and female sex hormones. If at about the seventh week the genital apparatus begins to develop testes and prostate, male hormones begin to dominate and a boy will be born. Otherwise, a girl will develop. That pristine contest between male and female sex hormones persists all through the lives of men and women. In the decline of sexual vigor the opposing hormones may become relatively more dominant in a particular individual. In a man, according to the latest interpretations, such relative predominance of female sex hormones in his blood may cause his-prostate to enlarge. Prostatic hypertrophy is a painful, debilitating befuddling condition, usually treated by excision of the gland. Last week Dr. Harold P. Rusch of Madison, Wise, urged physiological treatment of prostatitis with injections of the male hormone called testosterone.

Pregnancy & Hearts. The idea that pregnancy enlarges the hearts of women was disproved by Dr. Edward J. Van Liere & Clark K. Sleeth of Morgantown, W. Va.

Physical Educators Confidence for Cripples. From 15% to T,OC/C of all cripples suffer from spastic paralysis, said Dr. Earl R. Carlson of Manhattan, himself a spastic. Their condition is due to destruction at birth of brain cells through which the brain ordinarily controls the muscles. Uncontrolled, they jerk and yank, make the victim behave like an idiot. The brain cells never grow back. But the spastic cripple can learn to behave like a normal person by concentrating on one action at a time. One of Dr. Carlson's early treatments for this condition is to make the cripple walk along a crack in the floor. This requires utmost concentration. Practice gives the spastic self-confidence, has enabled one of Dr. Carlson's patients to play expert golf, another to play the piano, another to operate a bacteriological laboratory, and Dr. Carlson to get up and speak to 3,000 physical educators.

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