Medicine: Capsules, Aug. 8, 1955

¶To give doctors quicker service, the A.M.A.'s Council on Pharmacy and Chemistry is abandoning its old system: testing every manufacturer's brand of drugs and awarding seals of approval for those that pass. Instead, the council will henceforth sift researchers' reports on new drugs as soon as they are submitted and render a verdict on each as a standard chemical, ignoring brand names.

¶ U.S. hospitals cared for 20,345,431 patients in 1954, an increase of less than 1% over the previous year. However, 3,342,599 babies were born in the hospitals, an increase of 7%, and overall hospital expenditures for patients and infants hit $5.25 billion, a 10% jump. In nonprofit general hospitals the cost of the average patient's stay was $171 (for about seven days), up from $160 in 1953.

¶ Fears that a new and uncontrollable type of tuberculosis may be spread by bacilli resistant to the drugs now widely used are unfounded, New York City's Department of Health reported. In one sample, 10% of patients had resistant bacilli, but these were resistant only to certain drugs and could be kept in check by others.

¶ An Easter chick can be a poor gift for a child, Minnesota doctors found after checking what happened in Hennepin County last year: twelve persons (six of them infants under a year old) had a severe intestinal disorder, marked by fever, diarrhea, blood in the stool and vomiting, after exposure to chicks infected (as many poultry are) with bacteria called Salmonella typhimurium.