Medicine: Capsules, Mar. 22, 1954

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¶ What many a hospital patient has known for many years, that the bedpan is more trouble than it's worth, won official medical sanction. "It requires twice as much energy to use it as it does to walk to the bathroom," said Manhattan's Dr. Howard A. Rusk, rehabilitation expert. Also, taking a shower consumes four times as much energy as using a tub.

¶ Lack of vitamin C was suggested by Dr. Carl T. Javert, of Cornell University Medical College, as a common factor in the inability of some women to carry babies to term. Of 100 he tested, 91 had babies after taking (among other treatments) five times the normal quota of vitamin C—four big glasses of orange juice a day, plus a hesperidin supplement.

¶ Dr. Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, 60, Hungarian-born refugee from both Nazism and Communism, was named 1954 winner of the $1,000 Albert Lasker Award of the American Heart Association. His brilliant researches into what muscle is and how it works (TIME, July 4, 1949) "have led to new understanding of the basic physiology of the heart," said his citation.

¶ From Philadelphia's Heart Specialist William D. Stroud came a terse prescription: Moderation is the best answer to heart disease; too many doctors try to prolong life by making life miserable for the patients.

¶ For victims of glaucoma, Dr. Bernard Becker of St. Louis' Washington University reported two hopeful developments: 1) more accurate methods of measuring pressure inside the eyeball, so that the disease can be detected earlier, and 2) an experimental drug which drastically lowers the pressure.