Meeting in Algiers

An Allied Medical Conference was held last week in the semicircular lecture hall of the University of Algiers. French doctors played host. About 100 British and U.S. doctors and a few Russians attended. There was real, prewar Gallic bonhomie provided by French doctors from Algiers (e.g., Professor Edmond Benhamou of the University) and Tunis (e.g., Paul Durand, director of the Pasteur Institute), assisted by a U.S. military band and cocktail parties. Points from some of the papers:

DDT. The U.S. Army proved at Naples that its new DDT (real name censored) delousing powder is the best typhus-preventive yet discovered, better than steam or typhus vaccine. Colonel William E. Stone of Pocatello, Idaho, one of the men who helped develop it, said that DDT may put an end to insect-borne diseases. Altogether, 1,300,000 people were dusted in Naples.

Sontoquine. If a man gets typhus, a useful drug is a new synthetic with a naphthalene nucleus, called sontoquine. Dr. Durand and Jean Schneider, a Tunisian colleague, said that "it relieves headaches rather quickly, brings back sleep and seems to operate favorably on nervous phenomena and on urinary retention." Sontoquine is also useful in malaria.

Hints for soldiers and sailors: 1) on long marches, they should hook their fingers in the shoulder straps of their packs, continually move hands and elbows, to be sure of good circulation and the ability to handle guns when they reach the front; 2) to protect their eyes from tiny fragments from land mines, they should wear Plexiglas goggles or masks; 3) to avoid the concussion of depth charges, swimming sailors should float on their backs.

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