Capsules

> Federal disease detectives joined state and local health officials in the search for the cause of a mysterious epidemic of pneumonia (75 cases so far) that has swept through Austin. Minn. (pop. 23,000) and lapped at nearby Rochester (pop. 30,000), home of the famed Mayo Clinic. The pneumonia has been unusually severe: delirious patients have had to be restrained; three elderly victims, previously in poor health, have died. So far, none of the microbes known to cause pneumonia have been identified.

>Suspicious of the old wives' tale that more babies are born at full moon than other times, Obstetrician Ernest T. Ripp-mann of Lancaster, Pa. checked 9,551 births for a ten-year period, found nothing to it. On the contrary, slightly more babies were born close to the new moon than to the full moon.

>Baby's pacifier, long condemned as unsanitary, likely to cause disease and deform the teeth, is making a comeback. An American Dental Association spokesman wrote in Today's Health that many pediatricians and dentists now regard the pacifier as the lesser of two evils when compared with thumb sucking. Strong point in the pacifier's favor: children give them up earlier (usually at 14 months), then usually do not take to the thumb, which can gravely deform the permanent teeth.

> For "Papanicolaou smears" and similar cancer tests based on examination of cells from suspected disease sites, specially trained technicians have to examine the slides, pass the doubtful ones on to pathologists for further expert scrutiny. Such technicians are scarce. To get around this, the University of Tennessee in Memphis is experimenting with an electronic-eye "cyto-analyzer" that, it is hoped, will pick out the obvious negatives, leave truly suspicious slides for the pathologists to check.

> With Britain reporting more than 2,000 cases of poliomyelitis this year (three times the U.S. rate, in proportion to population), the government still banned importation of American-made Salk vaccine except as a gift from U.S. donors, relied on British vaccine, which is in short supply. Commented the Lancet: "If the American vaccine is safe enough for gifts of it to be allowed to enter the country, it is safe enough for people here to be allowed to buy it ... The present compromise [is] irrational."

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