Medicos Meet

The wonder was that anyone was left to tend the sick. More than 6,000 U.S. doctors were in San Francisco last week for the annual convention of the American Medical Association.*

Medical news reported to the convention proved to be mostly a rehash of findings already told. Nevertheless the 250-odd papers read before the assembled medicos made an impressive progress report. Some highlights:

For the Sick at Heart. Many doctors make unnecessary invalids of patients who have minor heart ailments. So said Dr. William D. Stroud, famed cardiologist of the University of Pennsylvania, who jolted the A.M.A. convention with a stiff dose of cardiac horse sense.

A lot of practitioners, he warned, have bought electrocardiograph machines and make routine tracings of heart rhythms without knowing how to interpret them. Result: "Too many doctors urge patients to give up their employment and become invalids on such minor electrocardiographic findings."

In children, said Stroud, "there are many [heart] murmurs, especially in the pulmonic area, which are absolutely of no importance from the standpoint of circulatory efficiency or length of life. . . . Certainly their lives can be much happier if their physical activities are unrestricted."

Patients who have suffered coronary occlusion--a common form of heart attack--can return to light work after three months or so and, "after adequate collateral circulation has developed, it really doesn't seem to matter what activities these individuals carry on within reason. . . ." He added that there was no reason why victims of high blood pressure and heart disease should not drink in moderation, though those who are sensitive to nicotine should give up smoking.

For the Blind. Can the blind be equipped with radar-like equipment which will transmit visual images to their brains? "Fantastic as it may sound, we are proceeding along that line," said the Navy's medical chief, Vice Admiral Ross T. McIntire. Researchers at the Naval Hospital at Bethesda, Md. are seeking a way to reach the optic nerve endings (if they are undamaged) with radio waves in such a way that they will be converted into sight, just as radar can now pick out an object with ultrashort radio waves and project it mechanically on a screen. "I still have hope," said Mclntire, "that we will find a way. . . ."

For Goiters. A single dose of radioactive iodine cured 35 out of 46 cases of goiter caused by overactivity of the thyroid gland (symptoms: bulging eyes, rapid heart action, nervousness). Surgery, the previous remedy, was unnecessary, said Dr. Earle M. Chapman of Boston. Colorless and odorless, the radioactive iodine was made in the M.I.T. cyclotron, costs only $2.50 per treatment.

*Appearances were deceiving; despite the Frisco outpouring, at least 174,000 doctors remained at home.

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