Capsules

P: Of all the major professions, dentistry is the least progressive and most naive psychologically, said Psychologist Robert Lindner (TIME, Dec. 6) in a speech to the Baltimore City Dental Society. "Adoption of a sort of half-baked chairside manner is the limit of the psychotherapy dentists undertake . . . Patients approach the dentist with more anxiety than about almost anything else. But the dentists have no technique of allaying this anxiety . . . Some articles in their dental journals sound as if there were just teeth and no patient . . ."

P: A new full-payment health plan, underwritten by California Physicians' Service (Blue Shield), went into effect in Long Beach, Calif. Unlike most health plans, the extended coverage scheme guarantees that some 1,100 participating physicians in the Los Angeles area will accept a set C.P.S. fee as full payment. Moreover, subscribers may use any hospitals and doctors outside C.P.S. if they are willing to pay extra. Average annual cost per family: $160.

P: The world's fourth known family case of female hemophilia was reported in Seattle by two University of Washington internists. Thomas Newcomb and Martin Matter. Their discovery, confirmed by standard tests: a seven-year-old girl who reversed the usual transmission pattern (mother-carrier-to-son) by inheriting the disease from her father's side of the family.* A paternal grand-uncle is known to have had bleeding problems in childhood; there is no maternal hemophilia history. The girl was hospitalized after loosening baby teeth caused excessive bleeding, is now responding favorably to standard treatment (i.e., injection of fresh plasma).

P: A new fluoroscopic method of diagnos ing uterine tumors has been developed by Gynecologist Ralph R. Stevenson of Washington, D.C. First, he injects a harmless dye into the patient's uterus. As he manipulates the uterus, a "watching" X-ray tube projects a picture of the organ onto a fluoroscope screen, and tumors show up as shadows. A movie camera records the picture for future reference. Main potential benefit: fewer hysterectomies done on suspicion, but no sure proof, of uterine abnormality.

* All three of the other female hemophiliacs' families were British, all fitted the classic Mendelian inheritance pattern: a father-bleeder, a non-bleeding mother-carrier. One of the hemophiliac daughters successfully bore a child (TIME, July 16, 1951), but was later forced to undergo surgical removal of the uterus after she nearly bled to death.

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