Medicine: Capsules, Jan. 3, 1955

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¶ Many overweight patients who have tried reducing routines without success can be helped if unobtrusiveness is added to the prescription, reports Philadelphia's Dr. Jacob J. Cohen in GP. They are told not to tell their friends about the regimen until results are obvious; they are allowed small sodas or short beers, and any drugs prescribed are taken at home before breakfast.

¶ The Hippocratic oath, which bids a doctor hold as "holy secrets" anything that he learns in his practice, is not binding when disclosure might prevent harm or danger' to others, wrote Surgeon Edward Clifton Dawson in the British Medical Journal. A big majority of polled doctors and laymen agreed that if a railroad engineer suffers from epilepsy but refuses to tell his employers, the doctor should do so. The margin was much narrower in favor of his telling the police the name of an abortionist that he had learned from a patient.