Congresses

Last week five organizations convened to hear reports on new researches important to medicine and certain verifications of older work: the Medical Society of the State of New York (in Manhattan) ; the American Association of Immunologists (at Albany) ; the American Association of Pathologists and Bacteriologists (at Albany); the American Association for Cancer Research (at Albany); and the American Association of Anatomists (at New Haven).*

In Manhattan:

Canned Vitamins. Dietitians believed heretofore that the canning of vitamin-bearing foods destroyed the vitamins/- as did open cooking. Dr. Walter H. Eddy of Teachers' College, Manhattan, proved at least for Vitamin C (anti-scurvy), that oxidation makes useless this complex chemical. In ordinary cooking much oxygen reaches the food, in canning very little. Actually canned vegetables are more healthful than cooked fresh ones.

Painless Childbirth. Three hypodermic injections of epsom salts, one with a trace of morphine, prevented pains of 96% of 3,000 mothers delivered the past three years. The procedure may be used by any competent physician anywhere, under any conditions; is much preferable to the nitrous oxide or the "twilight sleep" technique. (Reported by Dr. James T. Gwathmey of Lying-in Hospital, Manhattan.)

Successful Insulin. Insulin (TIME, Aug. 27, 1923) has brought moribund diabetics out of coma, has prolonged the lives of sufferers several years. Complete cure of diabetes is not yet positive. Moderate doses of insulin are not permanently injurious. Yet a certain death definitely due to insulin over-dosage has frightened many persons. Quacks and some commercial biological chemists have misled slow-wits by exploiting substitutes. Some physicians have reported poor results from the true product because they had not learned its proper use. (Reported by Dr. John Ralston Williams of Rochester, N. Y., after four years' verification.)

Rapid Blood Tests. The careful Wassermann blood test for syphilis requires five reagents and almost 24 hours' reacting time, an inconvenience to the diagnostician and a nerve-racking wait for the patient. Dr. R. le Kahn of the Michigan State Health Department demonstrated a new test which requires only one reagent and 15 minutes to show definitely the blood condition. His department and the U. S. Navy have adopted his quick method, it was said.

The Dicks. Seven years ago in Chicago Dr. George Dick started to hunt for the germ of scarlet fever with hopes of developing a cure and a preventive. His own money income was meagre. He could get no supplement from institutions. So his wife, Dr. Gladys H. Dick, who has long been his coworker, found a job as technician in an Evanston, Ill., hospital, earned enough money to buy them laboratory supplies, scrimped over their household expenses. They found their germ and two years ago perfected their technique of cure and prevention. Topping this, to them satisfactory reward, the immunologists, bacteriologists and pathologists meeting in Albany recommended by secret vote that Dr. George Dick receive the next Nobel Prize in medicine.

At Albany:

Pneumonia Antitoxin. An antitoxin possibly efficacious against the four types of pneumonia** has just been devised. If the symptoms (sharp pains in chest, chills, temperature rise, coughing) are quickly heeded and this new antitoxin given within 48 hours, then the prognosis seems good. The reporters, Drs. B. J. Olson, G. H. A. Clowes and W. A. Jamieson of Minneapolis, have had success with 100 cases, warned against too much optimism before further testings.

Needless Antitoxin. Antitoxin against scarlet fever has kept people from catching the disease in several widely scattered U. S. cities where tests were made, reported Dr. John F. Anderson of New Brunswick, N. J. But Dr. William H. Park of the New York City Health Department amended the optimism by pointing out that scarlet fever is not highly contagious, that the antitoxin should be administered to cure, not needlessly to prevent.

Hereditary Cancer. Most authorities hold that cancer or susceptibility to or resistance to the disease is peculiar to each individual, that none of these conditions can be inherited. However Miss Maude Slye of Chicago, who for 18 years has been experimenting on mice with cancer, claimed last week that the ability to resist the disease is inheritable, that she has prevented its appearance in 25 generations of mice, that the American Association for Control of Cancer should be condemned for not warning the public of these facts.

At New Haven:

High Grade Whites. Dr. R. Bennett Bean of the University of Virginia, from a profound anatomical study of races, reported that the white races are advancing in superiority over the yellow and black; if not, the yellow and black are receding. He reached this finding after dividing humanity, irrespective of color, into high, medium and low types, then subdividing these grades according to color. Among the low, those with deficient mentality and bodies, stubby fingers, slanting foreheads and other stigmata, there were relatively few whites. Not so the black and yellow.

Upright Man. Of importance to Anatomy are the studies of Dr. Dudley J. Morton, of the Yale Department of Surgery and the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan, who showed to the satisfaction of his scientific audience that man is directly descended from an upright, walking anthropoid. The lowest form of living ape, the gibbon, is the only animal that runs on two feet like man. Other apes hop and leap or go to all fours when on the ground, and are never more than semierect in natural pose. Therefore, he concludes, their present posture has been acquired.

Growth. After similar experiments on rats, Dr. Philip E. Smith and Professor Herbert M. Evans of the University of California reported that dwarfism and gigantism result from the abnormally less or great activity of the hypophysis, the small ductless gland below the brain./-/-

*The American Medical Association will convene at Dallas, April 19-23.

/-For a brief exposition on vitamins, see TIME, Feb. 15.

**For an exposition on pneumonia, see TIME, Feb. 15.

/-/-These experiments are not new.