Capsules

P:Because of the apparent relationship between heavy cigarette smoking and lung cancer, famed Surgeon Alton Ochsner of New Orleans laid it on the line: "I advise the man who smokes heavily, especially if he is over 40, to have a chest X ray every six months--or preferably every three months--so that the physician can find the cancer, if one develops, while surgery can still cure it." P:Virginia doctors reported a new use for cortisone and ACTH: three small children, bitten by copperheads, were given the standard antivenom treatment but still had little chance of recovery. Two got better quickly after injections of corti sone, the third after ACTH.

P:When cerebral palsied children are being taught muscular coordination by playing with blocks and other toys, they are often frustrated and discouraged be cause they keep knocking the blocks down.

At the Children's Rehabilitation Institute in Cockeysville, Md., Therapist Ruth Brunyate had an idea: put permanent magnets in the blocks. Now the youngsters build more durable castles.

P:Britons consume 10 million aspirin tablets a day, and the fact drew from a British doctor, fortnight ago, the sad diagnosis: "A nation which is sick and tired."Americans top this, said the Uni versity of Maryland's Dr. John C. Krantz Jr. last week; they consume 42 million aspirins a day. All it means, added Krantz, is an increased tempo of life: "In the old days, if somebody missed a stage coach, he was willing to wait around a couple of days for the next one. Now we swear if we miss a slot in a revolving door." P: Plastic Surgeon Paul W. Greeley of Chicago disclosed that when Roger Lee Brodie died (TIME, Feb. 2), skin was taken from his body and put in a freezer.

Three weeks later, some of it was used to cover one side of the brain of his separated Siamese twin, Rodney. This graft took well, but another, after seven weeks, failed.

Rodney, said his chief surgeon, is "progressing well." P:The Brunhilde strain of polio virus, believed to be the one which causes most cases of the disease, has at last been adapted to grow in mice by Drs. C. P. Li and Morris Schaeffer of the U.S. Public Health Service. Significance: suspected polio cases can now be tested more easily and cheaply; it may be possible to work out a test for susceptibility to polio, and to develop a safe "live virus" vaccine.

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