Capsules

P: The switchboard at Manhattan's Bellevue Hospital lit up after press reports that the hospital was testing a drug developed in Denmark that would cure peptic ulcers in ten days. The truth: no such cures can be proved, and Bellevue may not even get around to testing the drug, it seems so iffy.

P:After finding a seemingly new disease among their Washington patients, Drs. Worth B. Daniels and Frank G. MacMurray report in the A.M.A. Journal that they have traced a total of 160 cases of cat-scratch fever. Just what causes the disorder after even a mild scratch by a playful pet is unknown, but common symptoms are chills, headache, nausea and bellyache, while in some cases the lymph glands become as big as golf balls for as long as two years.

P: One reason many adults do not get enough sleep, says Today's Health, is that after having the fear dinned into them from childhood, they lie awake worrying that they may not get enough sleep.

P:The chance that a woman who has German measles in the first three months of pregnancy will bear a defective child is at least one in five. And, said Harvard's Dr. Conrad Wesselhoeft, the fear of such an outcome can be so great that it may be best to end the pregnancy (by abortion) and "allow a fresh pregnancy to begin under more auspicious circumstances."

P: Mrs. Wilbur Chapman, 32, gave birth in Chelsea Naval Hospital to a boy, 4 lb. 6 1/2 oz., only three weeks after she had borne a girl, 3 lb. 14 oz. It was one of the rare cases (TIME, March 16, 1953) of concurrent pregnancies from almost simultaneous conceptions: Thelma Chapman has two wombs.

P: Researchers at the State University of Iowa seem to have found the perfect contraceptive--for rats. While they were fed nitrofuran compounds (chemicals obtained from oat hulls), male rats produced no spermatozoa, Dr. Warren 0. Nelson reported, but later they recovered their fertility and sired normal young. The University of Texas' Dr. Donald Duncan, edging out on a limb, said nitrofuran "could be the [human] contraceptive of the future."

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