Medicine: Capsules, Jul. 20, 1953

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¶ Air conditioning which drops the temperature to 75° F. when the street temperature is 90° or more is bad, said the Northwestern National Life Insurance Co»'s medical adviser. Moreover, if the air is not dried it merely creates "a chilly sweatbath." Recommended air-conditioning settings: 80° with 50% humidity.

¶ In Mobile, Ala., New Orleans' famed Surgeon Alton Ochsner was asked what he thought of½ socialized medicine. His reply: "We already have it ... in the free care of patients who are unable to pay for hospital care. What I am against is federal medicine, not because of its prospective effect on doctors, but because of the effect it would have on the type of care that patients would receive under Government control of the medical profession."

¶ Paul Delaney of Nahant, aged 5 ½½months, set a record at the Massachusetts Eye & Ear Infirmary by becoming its youngest patient to wear glasses. He has already had operations to remove cataracts which were present in both eyes at birth, is now expected to develop "workable vision."

¶ Health officers in Montgomery County, Ala. proclaimed that the great gamma-globulin inoculation campaign (TIME, July 13) had been a success: only six new polio cases had been reported in the week. Actually, the promptness of the sharp decline indicated that the whole costly program might have been unnecessary: the outbreak was probably dying out naturally since gamma globulin, so far as is known, could not bring such quick results.