Capsules

P:One of the biggest difficulties facing researchers in search of a polio vaccine has been the fact that polio virus could not be grown in a laboratory without rare and expensive nutrients for the virus to feed on (e.g., monkey testicles). Last week Dr. Herald R. Cox reported that Lederle Laboratories has found a way to grow the Lansing strain of virus in fertile hens' eggs, has already made a vaccine which works on monkeys.

P:The 1952 polio epidemic was tapering off but slowly, with 3,227 cases reported in one week (9% fewer than the week before). The total for the "disease year" (beginning March 30) was already 41,052 cases, compared with 33,703 in the same period of 1949, the previous record year.

P:As more & more strains of microbes learn to live with antibiotics and become resistant to their killing power, researchers keep hunting for new antibiotics to stay a jump ahead. Chas. Pfizer and Co.'s latest is magnamycin, now being tried in hospitals, which seems to knock out many germs which can defy penicillin and the rest.

P:Merck & Co. announced that Dr. Lewis H. Sarett has achieved the "total synthesis" of cortisone from a common coal-tar material, instead of having to start with scarce and costly bile acids (TIME, Aug. 18).

P:Doctors' offices will soon be filled with patients demanding a drug called beta-syamine, the A.M.A. Journal warned, because it is getting a big plug in a little magazine (Pageant). Touted as a "miracle drug" for heart disease, arthritis and paralytic polio, the stuff actually has not been proved to be much good for anything, says the A.M.A., and has not even been passed by the Food & Drug Administration as safe for general use.

P:Many drugs work their way out of the system so fast that to keep a steady concentration, patients have to take pills several times a day and sometimes during the night. Smith, Kline & French are getting around this with "Spansules"--capsules like a load of bird shot, filled with tiny pills which have coatings of varying thickness, so that a few dissolve every now & then. Manhattan neurologists find them excellent, when filled with amphetamine sulfate, for protecting epileptic patients against night seizures.

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