D.T. Solution

Delirium tremens usually lasts three to six days, and sometimes ends in death. This was one of the worst cases the doctor had ever seen. When the patient, a 37-year-old bartender, was carried into the doctor's office, imaginary rats were gnawing his feet, wild-eyed cats scrambling over his body, flames licking at his stretcher. The man was screaming and jumping with terror.

Dr. Robert V. Seliger, Johns Hopkins' famed alcoholism specialist, first quieted the patient with sedatives, then fed into his veins two "quarts of a mixed solution of sugar, salt, vitamin B-1 and insulin. The hallucinations became milder; the patient went through the motions of tending bar, smoking (flicking imaginary ashes into an imaginary tray), and after a time began to repair an imaginary watch.

A second injection of Seliger's solution pulled the patient right out of his delirium. Less than ten hours after the treatment began, the man walked out, calm and clear of mind. After a week of treatment, he had entirely recovered.

This week, in the Journal of Clinical Psychopathology, Dr. Seliger made a report on his new ten-hour treatment for the D.T.s. He has used it "with safety and marked success," he said, in a number of "uncomplicated" cases. Dr. Seliger thinks that his treatment confirms his theory that one of the chief causes of the D.T.s is lack of food, especially vitamin Bi.

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