Medicine: FREEZING: AN ATTACK ON PARKINSON'S DISEASE

PARKINSON'S disease presents a distressing set of symptoms. The patient suffers from shaking palsy. His gait becomes abnormal, and eventually he cannot walk. Finally there is a boardlike rigidity to his entire body that renders him immobile.

Medical researchers have not yet found the cause of the disease, but surgeons have succeeded in treating its symptoms. New York's Dr. Irving S. Cooper uses supercold liquid nitrogen to destroy an area of the brain that is responsible for the patient's characteristic tremors.

After the patient's head is shaved, he is given a local anesthetic at a...