SCIENTIFIC ADVANCES.

Press, Volume LX, Issue 18239, 25 November 1924, Page 14

SCIENTIFIC ADVANCES.

CONQUEST OF DISEASE. (raoi£ OTT3. owk coßßESPOimarr.) SAN FRANCISCO, October 24. Another name has been carved in the hall of medical achievement with the announcement of a new operation which American medical experts agree is likely to revolutionise gastric surgery and entirely change the treatment for ulcerous and nervous indigestion, one of the most troublesome and widespread of modern diseases.

As in the of the disco<\ ery of insulin for the treatment of diabetes, the credit foe the achievement goes to a Britisher, Dr. H. B. Devine, of Melbourne, of Australia. Before 25C0 leading medical men gathered at the Clinical Congress of the American College of Surgeons, Dr. Devine made public for the first time in the United States, at the Convention in New York, the details of the newoperation. The operation, he said, was based upon a complete revision of much that has been accepted in surgery and physiology. The new operation is simple, safe and can be performed by any skilful surgeon. Dr. Devine found that the sympathetic nervous system plays an important part in the functioning of the stomach. The speed and nerve-wrack-ing tension of modern living, through these nerves, cause the stomach to become cramped and in this unnatural position it ceases to function properly. The discovery of Dr. Devine is that this trouble can be entirely eliminated by completely neutralising the sympathetic nervous controlling- area. The operation, being simple and comparatively safe, was said to be within the reach of rich and poor alike.

Dr. Devine stated that the treatment is based upon experiment with animals. The chief features of the operation, according to the Melbourne surgeon, are the severance of the diseased nerve and the segregation of the afflicted part of the stomach from the healthv portion. Sureeons heretofore have been compelled to remove part nf the organ by means of extremely difficult and dangerous operations, but. the new method is so simple that it will come within the scone of the general practitioner's ability, Dr.'Devine declared.

New Twilight Sleep. Within the last few months one thousand babies have been brought into the world without pain to the mothers by a new and safer form of twilight sleep at the lying-in hospital in New York, it was announced at the convention of the Eastern Society of Anaesthetics, held in New. York- coincident with the Surgeons' Convention." The discovery was made by Dr. James T. Gwathemy, and is claimed.to eliminate the danger of poisoning the child, which was the.cause of "blue.babies" under the first method of using twilight' sleep. Dr. Gwathemy's discovery consists in tho use of scopolamin and morphine in a solution of Epsom salts. The salts make it* possible to obtain the same degree of immunity from pain with onefourth to one-sixth the quantity .of scopolamin, thus reducing the danger of toxic effects on the child.

Contagious Diseases. Tests at the Philadelphia Hospital for Contagious Diseases of a new serum for the prevention of measles, which have been conducted by the Department of Health of that city the last few months, give every indication that this disease can soon be made as rare as smallpox. Dr. Wilmer Krusen, director of the department, made a statement to this effect in his weekly health talk. Announcement by Dr. Krusen of the results of the tests in Philadelphia was the first information to be published concerning the new serum, which, he intimated, was taken-from patients who were convalescing from the disease. "We have found,- much to our surprise and gratification," Dr. Krusen said, that .of 122 children already immunised against the disease at the Philadelphia Hospital for Contagious Diseases and afterwards directly exposed to measles only six developed it, and with these six the disease was of such a mild form as to make its diagnosis difficult."

Artificial Light Uses. Artificial sunlight, provided by the fused quartz mercury arc vapour lamp, has the property of supplying the health-giving ultra-violet rays. It was found in experiments with baby chicks just completed at Bangor in the laboratories of the University of Maine. The experiments are equally applicable to children and are valuable in preventing or curing children's diseases, according to the experimentalists. The tests were conducted by Dr. C. C. Little, president of the Lmiversity of Maine, and Dr. W. T. Bovie, professor of biophysics at Harvard Medical School. Several hundred chicks were used in the experiment. Those treated with utra-violet rays were five times as heavy as the others, were more healthy, more vigorous, .and continued to thrive without change of food or quarters. Dr. Bovie declared that 75 per cent, of the chickens living only hi sunlight were victims of rickets., while in the case of others all lived with the exception of a few that were killed by rats. "The importance of these experiments would" be very great if they were' applicable only to the raising of chickens." said Dr. Bovie, explaining the experiments. "They are quite applicable to the production of eggs, and, more important still, they arc applicable to raising of our own children. for the disease known as rickets is a disease of calcium metabolism and is a disease which can be cured by a proper exposure to the ultra-violet right.'' America is becoming a "legless nation, %f according to an opinion of one of the medical experts who attended the South-West Clinical annual session in Ka.nsns City, and the statement precipitated a lively disfcussion on leg 3, and the growing habit of riding everywhere instead of walking. Tho American people are saying it "with gasoline" instead of "with leather" in the opinion of Dr. C. D. Blake, of Havs, Kansas, who addea that as a result the "future genera tions may find themselves very legless far as any ability to walk considerable distances is concerned." But Dr. C. It-. Burn, of Princeton, thought differently. Many jxtsohs who ride in motor-cars now never walked before," he said. "Horse-drawn vehicles and trains long ago supplanted long journeys afoot."