Reducing Made Easy

The bulge in many a human waistline can now be liquidated without will power. Successful experiments with a new appetite-killing drug have been reported by Philadelphia's Endocrine Research Institute. A group of 300 men, women & children who tried the drug lost an average of two pounds a week painlessly.

The drug: dextroamphetamine (a form of benzedrine). The institute's doctors, reporting their discovery in The American Journal of the Medical Sciences, said they started their patients on a reducing diet of 900 to 1,300 calories, administered the drug only when hunger got the better of the patients. Backsliders then got about 5 mg. of dextroamphetamine an hour before each meal. (When necessary patients also got thyroid extract or a diuretic to help them get rid of liquids.)

Result: in most cases appetites were so dulled that the patients returned to the prescribed diet without a pang. After a few months they learned to get along without the drug. To find out whether the drug had any bad effects, two of the doctors dosed themselves with it for 48 hours, during which they went without food, drink or sleep: the experience, they reported, was "exhilarating." But the doctors warned that the drug may be harmful to some people or in excessive doses, should not be taken except on prescription.

Only fly in the ointment: some middle-aged women and fat little boys & girls with big appetites ate incorrigibly even after taking dextroamphetamine.

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