Medicine: Capsules, Aug. 17, 1953

¶ In Chicago, Board of Health President Herman Bundesen lowered the boom on the re-use of plastic glasses for three-dimensional movies. Although the glasses are supposedly sterilized after each use, they increased eye ailments "to almost epidemic proportions." Approved by the board: glasses with cardboard frames, discarded after one viewing.

¶ In the American Journal of Psychiatry, Dr. Peter A. Peffer, manager of the Perry Point, Md. Veterans Administration Hospital, told about a new "rehabilitation incentive" for mental patients: money. Peffer has carefully transferred partially cured psychiatric patients at his hospital to the status of "member employees.'' (Sample jobs: landscape worker, painter, janitor.) He found that a monthly paycheck for many patients is a valuable bridge between life in an institution and life in society outside, restores their self-esteem and greatly accelerates recovery.

¶ U.S. twin births are declining, reported Obstetrician Alan F. Guttmacher, of Manhattan's Mt. Sinai Hospital, in Obstetrics and Gynecology. Until 1939, one out of every 86 births in the U.S. was a twosome. By 1949, the U.S. twin rate had dropped to one in 97, and the ratio is going farther down. Dr. Guttmacher, an identical twin, believes there are some undiscovered biological or environmental factors affecting the glands of U.S. mothers.