Capsules

P: Betty Sheaffer has never been able to go to school because she suffers from osteogenesis imperfecta, an uncommon disorder in which the bones are so fragile that they snap under the slightest strain. She has had about 100 fractures (her parents have lost count), at least two simply from being startled. Last week Betty Sheaffer, 22, graduated from Stowe Township High School, near Pittsburgh, after 13 years of home instruction. Her chosen career : typist, working at home.

P: Mittens of foam rubber, fitted over obstetrical forceps, have cut down both the number and severity of injuries to babies' skulls during delivery, Dr. Emanuel Greenberg of Manhattan's Mt. Sinai Hospital reported. He now recommends the soft mittens for a variety of surgical instruments whose steel edges may damage parts of a patient's anatomy.

P: Most pills on prescription are ordered taken three times a day, and this "is about two doses too many for the average patient to remember," writes Philadelphia's Dr. Benjamin Wheeler Jenkins in GP. The pills are not taken, and pile up on bathroom shelves. His suggestion: more pills of the repeat-action type, to give a day's dosage in one dollop.

P: To settle scary rumors that fluorides added to drinking water (to protect the teeth of the young from decay) may have harmful effects, the U.S. Public Health Service compared death rates and causes in cities with and without fluorides in their water. The upshot: no difference.

P: Three Omaha orthopedists corrected a faulty diagnosis made more than 300 years ago. To illustrate a TV talk about bone disorders, they used a reproduction of Jose Ribera's masterpiece (original in the Louvre) titled Boy with a Clubfoot. The closer they looked, the more clearly they saw that the bright-faced teen-ager also had a deformed right hand. The canvas, they concluded, should be retitled: Boy with Cerebral Palsy.

P: On the strength of a government decision to hold a public investigation of doctors' salaries, Israeli physicians abandoned their plan for an all-out June strike (TIME, May 31).

P: Boston spawned a new disease in 1951, doctors there concluded after studying reports of 2,450 cases. Still unnamed, it is mild and so like German measles that only an immunologist could tell them apart. It usually attacks children, gives them a red rash, sore throat, muscle aches, and a short-lived fever of 102DEG F. Now that doctors know what to look for, they will probably find it outside Boston, too.

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