Capsules

P: West Virginia, first state to make wholesale use of the mutilating brain operation, lobotomy, in mental-hospital patients (TIME, June 22, 1953), decided to lay aside the knife and see whether it cannot get better results with ataraxic (tranquilizing) drugs. Of 775 patients operated on, 268 have been discharged from hospitals, but the state is not following up the cases to see how they have made out.

P: Supercharged experts from all over the world met at Oak Ridge, Tenn. to discuss advantages of supervoltage X rays (2,000,000 to 45 million volts) and radio-cobalt devices for treating cancer. The consensus: in many types of cancer they are no better than old-fashioned X rays; in some cases they offer only slight improvement. But they can markedly increase the cure rate in cancers of the mouth, nasal sinuses, brain, esophagus, parotid gland.

P: Five doctors of osteopathy, full-time employees of the Hoxsey Cancer Clinic in Dallas (TIME, Aug. 9, 1954) were suspended from practice for one year by court order after the Texas State Board of Medical Examiners complained that in associating with Hoxsey they had violated ethics by practicing with 1) a layman, and 2) one convicted of illegal practice at that.

P: Congress sent to the White House a bill authorizing the Secretaries of the three armed services to commission doctors of osteopathy as military surgeons. Chance that any will be appointed: nil.

P: In the famed University of Pittsburgh laboratories where the Salk polio vaccine was invented, Dr. Gisela Ruckle, a German emigree, reported that she had grown 25 generations of the measles virus in test tubes. The virus had hitherto defied domestication; now researchers may be able to make an effective measles vaccine.

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