Medicine: Capsules, Mar. 2, 1953

¶Two of the most valuable and widely used antibiotics can cause death if the physician employing them is not careful, warned the Mayo Clinic's Dr. P. T. Sloss. The trouble is most likely to develop on the fourth day of treatment with aureomycin or terramycin. The drugs kill many of the bacteria normally found in the intestine, and give a chance for resistant strains of staphylococci to multiply and poison the system. In such cases (so far, rare), the patient gets symptoms like those of cholera, and will die in a day or two, Dr. Sloss said, unless the drugs are promptly stopped. Effective drug against the staphylococcus bugs: erythromycin.

¶The National Association for Mental Health called on Blue Cross hospital-insurance plans to give the same coverage for mental as for other illnesses. Of 115 Blue Cross plans, it complained, only 9% do this; 45% put special limits on hospital stays for mental illness, and 46% exclude them entirely.

¶The outbreak of influenza which has been sweeping the U.S. has not been as mild as at first thought, the U.S. Public Health Service admitted. In 58 cities in one week, deaths from flu and pneumonia totaled 610. But the service was confident that the outbreak was waning fast.