Eyes, Noses & Necks

A.M.A. members had a wide choice of scientific readings and panel discussions in section meetings (often with half a dozen running at once), besides color movies, color-televised demonstrations on a 6-ft. screen, scientific exhibits by medical research teams and promotional displays by makers of drugs and gadgets.

P: The most case-hardened doctors sat on the edge of their chairs at color movies of Chicago's little Siamese twins, which included close-ups of their brains as Neurosurgeon Oscar Sugar sorted out the mixed-up blood vessels, and details of the long and complicated series of skin grafts (TIME, Dec. 29 et seq.). Also for the professional audience only was a sequence of the surviving twin, Rodney Brodie, sitting happily alone in a playchair, though the top of his head bulged under the pressure of the brain against its light covering of skin and fuzzy hair.*

P: I Some common psychosomatic symptoms can be mistaken for the common cold reported the University of Oklahoma's Dr Stewart Wolf. Hostility to the boss or resentment against mother-in-law as well as guilt and frustration can produce a stuffy head with "sinus headache" and a runny nose, as the body tries to wash out mother-in-law as it does dust or other irritants.

P: The finding of an ulcer in the stomach, as distinct from the more common ulcer of the duodenum, need not mean that the patient must be rushed to surgery for fear of cancer, a team of Boston doctors reported after studying 1,000 cases. They still urge prompt operation for any stomach ulcer if there is reasonable suspicion of malignancy; otherwise, doctors can safely treat the patient for a month and see how the ulcer behaves.

P: Half-yearly examinations by doctors are not enough to detect all breast cancers early, said a distaff team from the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania. As proof that women should learn to examine themselves once a month, they cited seven patients who detected their own breast cancers only a few months after doctors had found nothing wrong.

P: Cataract victims who have had the lens removed from the eye can be given near-normal vision with contact lenses, which may be of plastic, two Manhattan specialists said. Two others, from Philadelphia's Wills Eye Hospital, reported success in 14 of the first 18 U.S. cases of cataract treated by slipping a plastic lens into the eyeball itself (TIME, Feb. 4, 1952).

P: Minor traffic accidents, such as rear-end collisions, cause a motorist's head and neck to be snapped rapidly back & forth. This "whiplash" injury is often more serious than at first appears, said Neurosurgeons James R. Gay and Kenneth H. Abbott, after research at Ohio State University. They urged full and prompt medical attention to ward off chronic pain or permanent injury.

-The A.M.A. got together with Smith, Kline & French Laboratories to put Rodney on a nation-W1de TV show, but for the lay audience his head was kept covered with a baseball cap.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.