Capsules

P: Asian influenza has shown up at scattered points across the U.S., mostly at military centers or big conventions, with relatively few and mild cases. Last week San Diego's Health Officer Julius B. Askew reported the first massive invasion: Navy personnel there had 7,000 cases in a month (no deaths) and civilians 5,000 cases (four deaths from complications). There was no sign that the outbreak was waning.

P: Why did Artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901) have such a long trunk and short legs, walk so badly? To Paris Pediatrician Gaston Levy, the Moulin Rouge explanation (bone fractures at the ages of 13 and 14) is silly. His own "highly probable hypothesis'': the artist suffered from polyepiphyseal dysplasia, or defects at the bone ends, where growth takes place. This fitted the known facts that Toulouse-Lautrec appeared normal as an infant, had poor growth from the age of nine, thereafter had difficulty getting up from a chair, and walked in a clumsy duck waddle.

P: The rate of admissions to U.S. hospitals continued to rise in 1956, reported the American Hospital Association: 132 per 1,000, for a total of 22,090,000 admissions, an increase from 112 per 1,000 since 1946. But the average length of stay in short-term hospitals (excluding those for chronic diseases, e.g., mental illness, tuberculosis) was down in ten years from 9.1 to 7.8 days.

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