Medicine: Physiological Congress

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After the speechifying the physiologists walked across into the Harvard Yard (campus), where lights, music, refreshments and "admission by ticket only" resembled June Class Nights. Next day and each subsequent day of the week, busses carried the delegates across the Charles River to the Harvard Medical School, Peter Bent Brigham Hospital and the Boston High School of Commerce where the scientific sessions went on. Some points made:

Gastric Juice. Total loss of gastric juice causes death in five to eight days, unless Ringer's solution (sodium chloride, calcium chloride, potassium chloride, sodium bicarbonate and distilled water) is injected into the veins. Even so death is delayed at the most 76 days.—Chicago's Lester Reynold Dragstedt and James C. Ellis.

Cyclopropane Anesthetic, a new gas prepared by Philadelphia's G. H. W. Lucas and Toronto's Velyien Ewart Henderson acts similarly to nitrous oxide (laughing gas) but has more satisfactory after effects. Recovery is rapid. The patient does not struggle. Respiration remains normal, the blood pressure almost so.

Hen's Eyes contain in the retina red, yellow and almost colorless green globules, which may be important in the undetermined mechanism of color vision, stated London's Herbert Eldon Roaf.

Cod Liver Oil in small doses is more salutary than in massive doses, which may even be harmful. Pure cod liver oil is better than emulsions. Irradiating oil with ultraviolet light helps its effect.—Sweden's Erik Agduhr.

Yeast & Liver. Whole dried yeast helps the absorption of food. Water extract of liver stimulates appetite.—St. Louis' Wendell Horace Griffith.

Drugs & Mentality. No drugs tried by Stanford University's Walter Richard Miles improved the mental functioning of 30 rats. Ergo, probably no drug really helps man's mind.

Meat Diet. Arctic Explorers Vilhjalmur Stefansson and Karsten Anderson lived in the U. S. eating for a whole year nothing but beef muscle, tongue, liver, kidney, brain, fat, bone marrow, veal, lamb, pork, chicken, meat broths, black tea, water. They lived as ordinary city dwellers, except that they carefully walked an hour or so each day and occasionally ran about two and one-half miles. Their health remained excellent in all ways, leading New York's Eugene Floyd Du Bois, W. S. McClellan, H. J. Spencer and E. A. Falk, who studied them, to conclude that "in general white men, after they have become accustomed to the omission of other foods from their diet, may subsist on an exclusive meat diet in a temperate climate without damage to health or efficiency."

Deep Breathing & High Blood Pressure. Slow, deep breathing decreases the blood pressure of patients suffering from essential hypertension (high blood pres sure), Vienna's Wilhelm Raab reported, because thus they eliminate more than normal carbon dioxide from their blood. This does not apply to normal people or those suffering from nephritis with high blood pressure.

Synthetic Milk. China's Ernest Tso ground up fresh water-soaked soy beans and mixed the pulp with cane sugar, corn or rice starch, cod liver oil, calcium lactate, sodium chloride, cabbage water. This synthetic milk nourished Chinese infants as well as normal diet would have done.