Capsules

SCIENTIFIC SUPPORT FOR DMSO

Enthusiasts claim that DMSO (dimethyl sulfoxide) is a remedy for everything from acne to mental retardation. Critics denounce the substance as a quack cure unsupported by scientific studies. Now though, researchers at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions have documented that DMSO can exert a powerful effect on the immune system, suggesting that it might one day be helpful in treating rheumatoid arthritis and other immune-system diseases.

Neurologists Alan Pestronk and Daniel Drachman stumbled on the intriguing discovery while experimenting with the drug frentizole as a possible treatment for myasthenia gravis, a muscle-weakening disease in which antibodies damage the microscopic junctions where nerves and muscles meet. Because frentizole comes in powder form, the scientists first dissolved it in DMSO, a powerful solvent. Then they injected one group of laboratory rats with the frentizole solution and another group with plain DMSO to serve as a control. To their surprise, they found after a week that both groups of rats had significantly lower levels of the destructive antibodies. Further tests showed that the DMSO alone, not the frentizole, had countered the antibodies. Researcher Pestronk urges caution, however: "Our studies should in fact serve as a warning that DMSO should not be used cavalierly, because it does have such a significant impact on the immune system."

WHAT AILED VINCENT? "I am either a madman or an epileptic," wrote Painter Vincent Van Gogh. Certainly the facts of his life seem to bear him out. In his last years he cut off part of his left ear, drank kerosene, ate paint, and was in and out of a French asylum. In 1890 he shot and killed himself.

Physicians, however, have never been completely satisfied with Van Gogh's self-diagnosis. Over the years they have come up with alternative explanations for his bizarre behavior, including mania, schizophrenia, even sunstroke. Because his late paintings were dominated by swirls of color, some observers believe he also suffered from glaucoma or cataracts.

Dr. Thomas Courtney Lee of Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., offers yet another possibility. Writing in the Journal of the American Medical Association, he suggests Van Gogh suffered from unintentional digitalis poisoning. Lee's evidence is tenable although admittedly circumstantial. Digitalis, a heart stimulant, was a treatment for epilepsy in the late 1800s. In two portraits of his physician, Van Gogh included the flowers of the foxglove plant, which is the source of digitalis. Most significant, halos and predominance of the color yellow--prevalent in his late paintings--are characteristic of the visual disturbances that accompany digitalis intoxication.

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