Medicine: B1 for Tic

As exquisitely painful as the prolonged probing of a dentist's drill on a bare nerve is Tic Douloureux, or facial neuralgia, a disease which attacks the nerve tract of cheeks, mouth and tongue. Neuralgia spasms seldom last longer than two minutes, often twist a patient's face into a hideous grimace of agony. Usually persons over 40 years old are victims of the disease, and at first attacks may occur no more than twice a year. Later they return several times a day with increasing severity until sufferers long for death as the only relief from their pain.

A draft of cold air, a warm drink, or even gentle stroking of a finger on a "trigger" spot may bring on an attack.

No one knows the cause of facial neuralgia, but to relieve pain physicians some times inject alcohol into the tough, sinuous trigeminal (facial) nerve or sever its root. Neither of these treatments is satisfactory, however, for alcohol injections may give only transient relief, and a severed nerve may impart a slack, dead expression to one side of the face.

Last week at the Washington meeting of the National Academy of Sciences (see p. 65), Dr. Henry Borsook and associates* of the California Institute of Technology offered new hope to neural gia sufferers. The scientists knew that vitamin B₁(anti-beriberi), which is found in yeast and fresh red meats, prevents nerve deterioration. On a hunch, they injected from ten to 100 mgm. of pure, synthetic vitamin B₁ directly into the veins of persons suffering from Tic Douloureux. The injection was repeated every day for six days a week. To the scientists' surprise, after several months of treatment 42 out of 52 patients became practically "symptom free," required no further injections.

The ten stubborn patients, however, were given a further course of injections. Along with pure vitamin B₁ they received large intramuscular doses of concentrated liver extract. All of them were soon relieved.