U is for Ulcers

Vitamin U is a name for a substance present in grass, hog stomach, peanuts and other ill-assorted foods. Lieut. Colonel Garnett Cheney of the Army Medical Corps thinks that stomach ulcers may come from lack of it. He once gave gastric ulcers to chicks with the help of a Uless diet.

At the Army's Hammond General Hospital in Modesto, Calif., where ulcer cases are common, he has tried out his ideas on 31 patients who were making no progress on conservative ulcer diets. He gave them additional eggs, olive oil, fresh greens, peanut butter, pills of hog stomach and grass--enough to bring daily diets up to a whopping 4,200 calories. The results, as announced in last week's Military Surgeon: pains of 25 patients stopped in about a week; 17 patients gained an average ten pounds; 22 of the patients recovered completely.

Dr. Cheney thinks months on canned rations may have caused the ulcers, but is not quite sure just what it was in his treatment that cured them: it might have been the vitamin U or it might have been the quantity of nourishing food.

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