Steady, Mates

Doctors have tried, but over the years they have found nothing that is sure comfort to people who get sick riding on ships, planes, streetcars or camels. They have given advice (eat, don't eat, lie down, move around, wear an abdominal belt, keep your eye on the horizon). They have also suggested such medicines as Atropine (which tones down intestinal activity, believed to be a factor in nausea), Prostigmin (which keeps the stomach working in the right direction), and sedatives. Nothing worked well enough.

Last week, two Johns Hopkins physicians, Drs. Leslie N. Gay and Paul Carliner, announced a new remedy which seemed to work. It was a drug called Dramamine (full name: beta-dimethyla-minoethyl benzohydryl ether 8-chlorothe-ophyllinate).

Dramamine's usefulness as a seasickness cure was discovered by accident. The drug was developed three years ago, by Chicago's G. D. Searle & Co., as a treatment for allergy. A year ago Drs. Gay and Carliner gave it to Mrs. Genevieve Ciesielski, of Baltimore, who suffered from hives and, incidentally, from car sickness. It cleared up both.

Last November, with Army sponsorship, Dramamine got a full-scale trial on G.I.s bound for Germany on the U.S. Army transport General Ballon. The drug, said the doctors, was almost 98% successful both in preventing and curing seasickness. The crossing was "extremely rough." One group of G.I.s got one capsule (100 milligrams) as the ship left New York, another six hours later, and then one before each meal and at bedtime; only two complained of dizziness, none of nausea. After the drug was stopped, 30% of them got sick. As a check to see if mental suggestion might be working the cure, a group of 123 believed that they were getting the new remedy, but actually got sugar capsules. In this group, 35 became good & sick; 'all but one recovered when they got Dramamine.

The public cannot buy Dramamine yet, but it will probably go on sale next month, by doctor's prescription.

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