Dear Time-Reader TIME Senior Editor Jack Tibby said recently of TIME'S Medicine section: "Here is the running story of one of the most fascinating and active frontiers of all technology--microscope and white coat division . . . But it is more than just the recorder of advancing medical science. It is the story of people: men, women, children--and doctors."

A lot of other stories happen after the Medicine section appears in TIME each week. Here are a few examples:

W. Page Pitt, 55, is head of the Marshall College department of journalism in Huntington, W. Va. He has been almost totally blind since the age of five, when a mastoid infection left him with 2% vision in his left eye. 3% in his right. With the help of friends, who read to him, Pitt was able to go through school and college. He became a reporter on the New York World, later went into teaching.

He visited eye specialists repeatedly, but they held out no hope for him. Recently, during a Florida vacation, his wife read him a story from TIME about Dr. William Feinbloom of Columbia University, who had developed doublet eyeglasses, enabling the near-blind to see (Dec. 15). When Mr. & Mrs. Pitt got back from their vacation, they found that four different friends had sent them copies of the story. Pitt visited Dr. Feinbloom, was fitted with the new glasses. Confronted with a printed page, Pitt discovered he could read whole words; before, with the aid of the most powerful reading glass, he had been able to make out only single letters. Now he is learning to read by himself. He calls the experience an "emancipation of the spirit." Says he: "One book I've always wanted to read is Alice in Wonderland, and now I'm going to read it for myself."

Every week TIME receives dozens of requests for permission to reprint articles or to quote from them. One of the most unusual came recently from Dr. Lenox D. Baker, of the Duke University School of Medicine. He wanted permission to reproduce the cover picture of Oilman Alfred Jacobsen, president of Amerada Petroleum Corp. (Dec. i). Dr. Baker also wanted permission to quote the cover caption in a paper on Marie-Strumpell arthritis that he was to deliver at a meeting of the American Academy of Orthopedic

Surgeons. The caption: "To find oil, you still have to drill a well."

Dr. Baker explained the enigmatic request: he wanted to make the point that digging for scientific evidence takes as much persistence as drilling for oil. Said he: "It might be said that Mr. Jacobsen found a 'passel' of oil. Likewise, the practitioner who is familiar with his field and is willing to search for details . . . will find a 'passel' of Marie-Strumpell arthritis."

Permission was given, and Dr. Baker used the analogy, along with a lantern slide of TIME'S cover picture of Oilman Jacobsen.

In this space two years ago, I wrote you about Abell Bernstein, Colorado manufacturer, who had undergone a successful operation for coronary artery disease by Dr. Samuel A. Thompson of Manhattan. After TIME wrote about the operation (Nov. 13, 1950), Bernstein drafted a letter to answer inquiries from other coronary sufferers. The letters, now totaling about 200, are still trickling in. Between 1938 and 1950 Dr. Thompson averaged fewer than four coronary operations a year; since then he has averaged more than 25 a year.

One of the people who first read about it in TIME was Mrs. Billie J. White, retired schoolteacher from Port Arthur, Texas. She underwent the operation two years ago, says: "I am now playing golf and taking any type of exercise that appeals to me." She has also become a fervent propagandist for Dr. Thompson and the coronary operation, has convinced at least four of her neighbors in Port Arthur to undergo similar surgery. One of them was her butcher, Joe Patillo, who had long suffered from corona ry trouble and had been forced to sell his grocery and meat market to pay medical bills. Mrs. White persuaded him that he ought to have the operation. Last December she drove Patillo and his wife to New York, paying most of their expenses. The operation was successful, and Patillo is back in business.

Cordially yours,

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.