Medicine: Capsules, Dec. 17, 1956

¶ The trouble with the iron lung and its portable little brother, the chest respirator, is that they make the patient breathe in a fixed rhythm and give him just the same amount of air each time. Now researchers at Nashville's Vanderbilt University report an electronic device which can be hooked up to either type of respirator and lets the patient breathe more naturally—when his own nervous system dictates, and as deeply. It works by electrodes taped to the chest: they pick up electrical nerve impulses intended for the paralyzed breathing muscles, divert them to an electrical amplifier which controls the machine.

¶ After cortisone came hydrocortisone and prednisone, each better than its predecessor, but researchers still dug frantically for a hormone which would suppress inflammation (especially in arthritis and rheumatism) without undesirable side effects. A team from Manhattan's Sloan-Kettering Institute and the Hospital for Special Surgery reports one which shows great promise in the first patients treated. Named triamcinolone, made by Lederle Laboratories, it is so far available only in minute quantities for testing.