Medicine: New Treatments

Physicians were cheered last week by reports of two promising treatments for major diseases.

Heart Lesions. Atherosclerosis (fatty elevations in the arteries supplying the heart and brain) is frequently fatal. Ever since he graduated from medical school at the age of 22, Dr. Alfred Steiner of New York City's Department of Hospitals has been interested in atherosclerosis. Last week young Dr. Steiner told how he had cured rabbits of this disease. First he produced atherosclerosis in ten rabbits by feeding them cholesterol (a pearly substance found in all animal fats). He then mixed small amounts of diluted choline, a ptomaine, with the rabbits' carrots. Result: after two months six of the rabbits were cured of their lesions. After further animal work Dr. Steiner, who also teaches in Columbia's topflight medical school, hopes to try choline on human patients.

Schizophrenia. Nourishment of the brain depends upon two important substances: sugar and oxygen. Modern treatment for schizophrenia is shockingly severe. When a schizophrenic is given insulin, his brain gets little sugar and shock ensues. Given metrazol, a drug with a camphor-like action, he goes into convulsions, stops breathing, shock ensues. Such shock blots out hallucinations, or delusions of persecution. Main trouble with insulin or metrazol treatment, however, is that the profundity and length of the shock cannot be easily controlled. Dr. Harold Edwin Himwich and associates of Albany Medical College reported in the Proceedings of the Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine that they had devised a new, safer method for depriving the brain of oxygen. They simply attached a five-quart breathing bag filled with pure oxygen to the patient's face, gradually ran out the oxygen and substituted nitrogen. The patient went into convulsions, but when the physicians thought the symptoms had reached a crucial point, they reintroduced pure oxygen into the mask. Five schizophrenic patients have received nitrogen treatment, said the doctors, and "the results are encouraging."