Gas for Drunks

Drunks swept up off the streets by police and carted to hospitals usually need sleep more than anything else, hence get little active treatment. But an occasional alcoholic may be so thoroughly saturated that he will sink from deep coma into paralysis and death. Taking an interest in such deplorable guzzlers, last year two internes at Boston's City Hospital, Drs. Leon J. Robinson and Sydney Selesnick, began experimenting on specimens in their hospital's alcoholic ward. Their aim was to develop a gas which would oxidize alcohol in the blood, help throw it off in the breath, restore the patient to a normal state of intoxication.

Last week in the Journal of the American Medical Association the young researchers announced excellent results with a combination of 10% carbon dioxide and 90% oxygen, administered through an ordinary ether mask. Not for plain disagreeable drunks is their treatment, emphasized the doctors, but only for desperate drunks with slow, jerky breath, faint pulse, dilated pupils, cold bluish skin.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.