Medicine: Capsules, Jun. 29, 1953

¶ Doctors and patients should not be scared away from the use of new and powerful drugs by warnings of their dangers or reports of occasional deaths, said the New England Journal of Medicine: "To withhold or ban most such drugs would reverse medical progress and lead to the death of many patients who might have been saved by the proper use of the drug."

¶ Well-meaning efforts to free victims of cerebral palsy from the stigma of mental inferiority have gone too far, said Manhattan Psychologist Harold Michal-Smith. Granted that the two conditions do not always go together, he said, they often do, and unless this fact is faced squarely, the retarded victims do not get the special schooling which can help them greatly,

¶ Several victims of Parkinson's disease, for which no effective treatment had been known, have been freed of their uncontrollable shaking and restored to near-normal life by a new brain operation, reported New York University's Dr. Irving S. Cooper. Discovered by chance when an accident happened during surgery for another purpose, the operation involves opening the skull and shutting down an artery in the brain with silver clamps which are left in place. One patient, so palsied for 18 years that he could not stand, hold a book, feed or clothe himself, now does all those things, and plays golf.