Medicine: Sensitive Stomach

Like many another medical specialist, Dr. Walter Clement Alvarez of the Mayo Clinic suffers from the disease he cures in other people. In Dr. Alvarez' case the ailment is stomach ulcers. Last week, looking and feeling better than he has in years. Dr. Alvarez went to Atlantic City to attend a meeting of the American Gastro-Enterological Association, of which he was president in 1928 and which has a special lecture named in his honor.

At last week's meeting Dr. Alvarez, speaking from his personal experiences, told stomach specialists to beware of foods which harm their patients in strange ways. "Since I found that I was abnormally sensitive to chicken and stopped eating it," said he, "life has been much easier."

One of his patients was a businessman who became abnormally drowsy at 11 o'clock every morning, fell asleep at conferences and while driving his automobile. Dr. Alvarez: "I had him test, one by one, the things he ate customarily at breakfast, and eventually we found that it was the cream in his coffee. Eliminating the cream ended the trouble. It is absolutely startling to see how food influences the brain.

"One responsible businessman had been in the hands of psychiatrists for eight or nine years. I put him on an elimination diet for the hives, and to my great astonishment had cured him of what was actually insanity.

"Another case was a young college student. He suddenly developed abnormal pains and a mental attitude that made his studies impossible. We really were convinced after a time that it was a mental case. Another doctor began testing him on food reactions. Two days later he called me over and showed me that the dull and apathetic boy was eager and bright again. The trouble was that he was sensitive to eggs. At school he had been eating, three or four of them every morning and it was enough to knock him out."