Capsules

P: Why smoking is dangerous and often painful for heart-attack victims was explained by researchers from Wayne State University (see EDUCATION). Patients volunteered to let them work two thin plastic tubes into their hearts and put a hollow needle into an arm artery. After three cigarettes, blood pressure and oxygen readings showed that the heart had to work much harder than usual but got little or no extra oxygen. Among the test's financial backers: the Tobacco Industry Research Committee.

P: Cancer of the stomach used to kill more U.S. men than cancer at any other site, but has now declined so sharply that surgeons in some areas cannot find enough cases for comparative research. Reason for the drop (40% to 50%), Director John R. Heller of the National Cancer Institute (TIME cover, July 27) told Congress, is unknown. And it is more than offset by the increase in lung cancer.

P: A research achievement that has nothing to do with the safety or effectiveness of false teeth, but may save their wearers embarrassment, was joyously reported to William Wrigley Jr. Co. stockholders: a new plastic to which chewing gum will not stick is almost ready for the denture trade.

P: Federal agents in Albany. N.Y. seized 5,247 cases of "Honegar," a honey-and-vinegar preparation promoted as a traditional Vermont remedy by Dr. DeForest Clinton Jarvis, bestselling author of Folk Medicine (TIME, Dec. 28). Said U.S. Attorney Theodore F. Bowes: the stuff is touted as good for about 35 ailments, ranging from arthritis to chicken pox, but cannot be sold in interstate commerce "until the label tells how to use the product to get the cures claimed."

P: Tolbutamide (trade name: Orinase), usually prescribed only for diabetes, also shows promise in reducing tremor and rigidity in victims of Parkinson's disease, so that they can do more in caring for themselves, reported two upstate New York doctors in the A.M.A. Journal. It is, they emphasized, no cure.

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