Capsules

P: Of 6,997 physicians turned out by 82 U.S. medical schools last year, only 173 were Negroes, and 132 of these graduated from Howard University and Meharry Medical College (both Negro schools), complained Dean Robert S. Jason of Howard's School of Medicine. P: The first report on a research project financed in part by the Tobacco Industry Research Committee (TIME, Nov. 15, 1954) was published by Providence Drs. Philip Cooper and James B. Knight Jr., and it had nothing to do with cigarettes and cancer. It indicated that while individual duodenal ulcer patients react differently to smoking, there is no consistent difference between smokers and non-smokers in the volume and acidity of stomach secretions.

P: Hospitals in Ohio'(as in many other states) have long enjoyed immunity against damage suits by patients injured because of hospital employees' negligence. The immunity was based on a tortured interpretation of an archaic ruling that classified hospitals primarily as charitable institutions. Now the Ohio Supreme Court has overturned the ruling, pointing out that hospitals can get liability insurance like any other business. Hospital trustees need not fear personal liability. P: To raise $500,000 for its expansion fund, Burge Hospital in Springfield, Mo. devised a novel come-on: donors may receive half the amount of their subscriptions in hospital services during the next ten years. With two weeks still to go, the campaign had netted $350,000. P: Congress sent to the President a bill to set up a National Library of Medicine within the U.S. Public Health Service. It will replace the Armed Forces Medical Library, probably the world's most valuable, now housed in a decrepit building on Independence Avenue, where its treasured archives are in constant danger from leaky roofs and fire.

P: After a campaign whipped up by the local press and an outfit calling itself the "Fluoridation Education Society of the Carolinas," Mayor Leon Schneider of Gastonia, N.C. ordered a halt to fluoridation of the city's water. Symptoms falsely attributed to the tooth-saving fluoridation process: "excessive thirst, spine becomes stiff, nausea, mental alertness deteriorates, nails become brittle and peel, vision becomes blurred." One hysterical woman phoned the mayor: "People are dying like flies." In contrast, the U.S. Public Health Service reported soberly and scientifically on the tenth year of fluoridation in Grand Rapids, Mich.: it has reduced children's tooth decay 60%, with no ill effects.

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