Medicine: Cures ?

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Cancer. To cure cancer, following the directions of practically 1,500 "sure-cures" recommended this summer to the American Society for the Control of Cancer, it is but necessary to use such simples as rattlesnake oil, garlic eaten raw, sheet lead with holes in it applied to the breast, goose grease, pondlily root, pulverized centipede, human spittle, slaked lime & tar, hog fat turned green with copper, etc.

These absurdities solicited a $100,000 prize money put up by William Lawrence Saunders of Manhattan for the prevention and the cure of cancer, major medical problem (TIME, Feb. 14; Aug. 8).

Very few reputable research workers submitted ideas. Smart, they knew that laboratory and clinic information on cancer is still too meagre to support a course of treatment, although great enough to suggest ways of preventing early death. Patient, certain of final success, the Society continues to hold ready the Saunders' prizes.

Anemia. The American College of Surgeons, meeting in Detroit last week, elected Dr. Franklin H. Martin, Chicago gynecologist, president; and heard the foregoing report on cancer cures. They heard also of an improvement of the excellent liver treatment for pernicious anemia, by Director Cyrus C. Sturgis of the Thomas Henry Simpson Memorial for Medical Research at Ann Arbor, Mich. Liver contains a complex substance which stimulates the bone marrow to manufacture the red blood corpuscles lacking in cases of pernicious anemia (TIME, Dec. 20; May 9). Patients heretofore have been obliged to eat a half-pound of liver daily, to keep alive. Dr. Sturgis' laboratory has fractioned out the vital elements important for the disease. "Five tiny vials," said he, "are equivalent to a whole pound of liver."

Asthma. Occidental pharmacologists only recently have applied a treatment for asthma, which the Chinese have used for centuries. This is the Chinese plant Ma Huang, used crudely in China, refined to its alkaloid ephedrin in the West. The spasms and wheezes of asthma are due to the contraction of the tiny muscles of the bronchi. Ephedrin causes them to relax. Breathing becomes comfortable. Pure natural ephedrin is difficult to isolate. A synthetic ephedrin would be preferable, and success in perfecting the synthetic drug, called ephetonin is what made significant a medical exhibition in London last week.