In Milwaukee

The Journal of the American Medical Association last year took in $1,534,609.98 and earned a profit of $605,095.69.* That profit paid for the A. M. A.'s many activities last year--as, the persistent campaign against quacks, health and public instruction, censoring of commercial food and drug products, inspecting & rating medical schools and hospitals, publishing learned, unprofitable journals. After all these expenses the A. M. A. had a surplus for the year of $93,842.75.

Over a period of years, the A. M. A. has accumulated from the profits of its magazine a total of $3,400,000 including $1,000,000 in government securities. $895,000 in railroad, municipal and other bonds, $335,000 as cash. Three quarters of a million dollars of all this is being held for a new A. M. A. building in Washington when times improve.

Fellows of the A. M. A. salute the Journal's ever-busy editor. Dr. Morris Fishbein, its business manager. Will Conrad Braun, and General Manager Olin West. They produce the income. They, however, do not guard the accumulation. For that job, Dr. Herman Louis Kretschmer, Chicago's genitourinary surgeon, was last week chosen A. M. A. treasurer. He succeeds Dr. Austin Albert Hayden. Chicago ear-eye-& throat surgeon, elected an A. M. A. trustee. Trustees were proud that the total depreciation of the securities in their charge "amounted to less than 6%, which is believed to be far less than the amount of depreciation in securities held by most other corporations.'' Only two issues had defaulted.

Having studied their corporate bank book, the doctors at Milwaukee +- turned with better understanding to the book of their profession, learned about many a new significant and interesting item, among which were:

White Blood. Much as Dr. Jean Valjean Cooke of St. Louis disliked stating, intensive local research has failed to disclose a cause or cure of the disease called leukemia. In this disease white blood cells which normally should number 7,500 per cu. mm. multiply in some cases to as much as1,000,000 per cu. mm. Overproduction comes from the blood-making (hematopoietic) elements of the spleen, marrow and lymph glands. Death invariably results--for acute cases within three months. Chronic cases may hang on for five years or longer. Radium and x-rays, arsenic or benzol cautiously administered for a time slow up the excess white cell production. Transfusion of normal blood has little effect, at least in leukemic children.

Babies. Professor Everett Dudley Plass of Iowa University asked the American Medical Association to consider birth control.* Dr. Barton Cooke Hirst of Philadelphia argued vehemently against the subject. "An undue limitation of fecundity has been one of the precursors to the extinction of a civilization or the subjugation of a people by a more virile and prolific race. We have already gone some distance on this road. . . . If a breeder of livestock defied the laws of eugenics as we do. he would be ruined." The A. M. A. as usual pigeonholed the subject.

Paying no attention to the debate. Dr. Frank Lee Bivings of Atlanta advised parents to have their babies in the winter time, for sunshine is important to babies even before they are born, and mothers get the most sunshine in spring and summer. This is at least true for Negro babies born in Atlanta. But it is probably true for all colors and classes of babies, because "babies born in [southern] Los Angeles, St. Petersburg and Atlanta weighed more than those of [northern] Iowa City and New Haven."+-

Progress on Common Cold. Professor Alphonse Raymond Dochez of Columbia University considers the common cold perhaps the most important medical problem of the temperate zone. Regarded as trivial in itself, it may lead to sinus disease, bronchitis, pneumonia, heart or kidney disease. Dr. Dochez has been one of the front rank investigators of the common ailment. Last week he reported small progress. Vaccines in general have been disappointing, as have been extra vitamins and exposure to ultraviolet light. Careful analysis of hygienic habits, clothing, and exercise has failed to show that these are important factors in immunity to colds. But there is one clue which Dr. Dochez and his associates, Dr. Yale Kneeland Jr. and Katherine C. Mills, hope may lead them to success. There is "evidence that several agents [viruses and bacteria] work together to produce the varied types of [respiratory] disease, and this evidence may lead to an efficient vaccination. . . ."

Hysterical Fugue-- The strange, sensational disappearance & reappearance of Raymond Robins, Hoover friend (TIME, Feb. 27 et ante*), came to mind when Professor Lloyd Hiram Ziegler of Albany Medical College discoursed on "hysterical fugue." During an attack of fugue, explained Professor Ziegler, "the patient leaves his home and makes an excursion or journey justified by no reasonable motive. The attack ended, the subject unexpectedly finds himself on an unknown road or in a strange town," as Col. Robins did in Whittier, N. C. A victim does not deliberately pretend or lie about his misadventures. They may be for him an unconscious effort to escape some unpleasant personal problem. Many of such runaways in early life walked and talked in their sleep.

Gait Recorder. When patients with foot or postural troubles go to Orthopedist Russell Plato Schwartz in Rochester, N. Y., Dr. Schwartz puts hobnails on their shoes and has them walk over an electrified metallic floor, thus making an electrical transcription of their gait. The record tells whether a person limps, walks unevenly or has other faults of locomotion, reveals fake claims of injury after accidents. It has proved that very high heels give the wearer unstable posture and tend to make her walk on the ball and toes of the foot. The recording device, which Dr. Schwartz calls an electrobasograph, indicates how an infantile paralysis cripple improves or fails to improve under treatment.

School Children's Sleep, as recorded by Emory University's Professor Charles Glenville Giddings Jr., is most restless during the first and last half hours. Children who ate heavy evening meals moved 100 times or more during nine hours' sleep. Children who ate ordinary dinners rolled half as often. Contrary to general belief, a warm bath before going to bed does not soothe a child, but a glass of warm milk does.

Baltic Tapeworms. People who eat raw or inadequately cooked pickerel, wall-eyed pike or perch caught in lakes of the north central states risk infection by "broad" Baltic tapeworms, stated Dr. Thomas Byrd Magath of Rochester, Minn. Cooking or freezing kill the worm larvae which the fish harbor. Immigrants from Baltic countries first brought the worm to the U. S. Now in increasing numbers the U. S. is producing its own human verminaries.

Toad Juice. In Eli Lilly's Indianapolis drug laboratories where he directs pharmacological research. Dr. Ko Kuei Chen, Johns Hopkins graduate, applied himself to finding out what there is in folk medicine which helps Chinese cure toothache, sinusitis and mouth sores with applications of dried toad venom and which made Shakespeare note: "Sweet are the uses of adversity, which like the toad, ugly and venomous, wears yet a precious jewel in his head (As You Like It). From glands located behind the eyes of 7,500 U. S., German, Jamaican, Uruguayan, South African, Chinese and Japanese toads. Dr. Chen extracted potent drugs (adrenalin, cholesterol, ergosterol, and two digitalis-like substances) which modern scientific medicine considers indispensable. Apparently toads do not use these potent drugs in their own economies. When Dr. Chen removed the glands from several toads, they seemed as well as ever, pursued their proper business of bug hunting. Prospective toad farmers should note that a toad produces only one crop of drugs. The extirpated glands do not grow back.

Burns. At Worland, Wyo., lives Doris Johnson, 19 mo., one of many U. S. children crippled by burns. Doris, while toddling on her father's ranch, stumbled into a bed of hot ashes. When her burned hands healed, one was a crumple. Doctors of Colorado Springs Beth-El General Hospital recently untwisted the infant's fingers and palm, last week were getting ready to graft skin where needed and useful.

In Milwaukee last week Dr. Donald Breckinridge Wells of Hartford, Conn., told how deformities like Doris Johnson's might be prevented. Let severely burned or scalded people be plumped into a tub of tannic acid solution,* he advised, and be given quantities of liquids to drink. The drink balances the water lost from the system on account of the burning, while the astringent tannic acid relieves pain, toughens the body surface and loosens burned tissue. While the victim is in the bath, several attendants busily remove loosened, burned tissue and wash unharmed skin with soap and water. This procedure may take three hours. But it is worth while, for it tends to prevent infection, which causes the greatest trouble in healing burns. For three days after the bath, attendants spray the raw patient with tannic acid solution and dry him with warm air from an ordinary barbershop blower-- all this to toughen his exterior and thus keep out germs. Dr. Wells said that his method was especially successful after burns from gasoline explosions and ignited clothing, and extensive scalds.

If scars do develop, volunteered Dr. Howard Leighton Updegraff of Hollywood, plastic surgeons can do what they are doing for Doris Johnson's hand. For head disfigurements it is now possible to remake eyebrows and lashes with snips of scalp. linings of the eyelids with mucous membrane from the mouth, and to remodel noses, lips and ears with skin grafts. Burned faces, said Dr. Updegraff, are more common now than in Wartime.

Courtship Itch. Dr. William Waddell Duke of Kansas City cited the case of a heat-sensitive swain who feared making love to his sweetheart because every time he caressed her he had an itching attack, and was obliged to scratch. Contrariwise, cold makes certain sensitive individuals restless. Surrogated Dr. Duke: "It's extremely unfortunate if a husband is cold sensitive and his wife heat sensitive. He feels good if he's active, and the same thing makes her feel bad."

Other Points-- The slick tongue which usually goes with pernicious anemia often roughens up, if the patient absorbs plenty of Vitamin B, said Drs. William Skainline Middleton and Adolph Hutter of Madison, Wis. Eruptions of the soles and palms often are due to infected teeth, tonsils, ulcer or other disease of the digestive tract, observed Dr. George Clinton Andrews Jr. & associates of Manhattan. A normal adult has very nearly 1/20 of an ounce of sand in his lungs. Dr. William Duncan McNatty of Chicago calculated. A coal miner's lungs contain about 1/6 oz., a zinc miner's 2/5 oz., a stone cutter's 3/5 oz., a granite cutter's 1 1/10 oz. Dr. William James Gardner of Cleveland described the fate of a young woman who had one-half of her brain cut out because of a tumor. Amazingly, she lost neither To hostesses, a "natural." sight, speech, intellect or ability to move about. Yale's Dr. Arthur Meyer Yudkin reported that cod-liver oil and Vitamin A concentrate are effective remedies for the impaired vision which follows excess smoking and drinking.

A. M. A. Activities. The A. M. A. on April 1 had 97,111 members, a decrease of 2,359 from the previous total, largely attributable to economic conditions. The Committee on Foods last year censored the advertising, labeling and purity of 631 commercial food products, approved 510.-- The Council on Medical Education is actively persuading medical schools to limit their enrolment to stop overproduction of U. S. doctors. The nation has 25,000 too many doctors already, estimates the A. M. A., and 6,000 new students entered medical schools last year. Doctors educated abroad hereafter will find getting a license to practice in the U. S. exceedingly difficult.

New President of the A. M. A. is Dr. Dean De Witt Lewis, wealthy Baltimore (Johns Hopkins) surgeon, elected last year. Elected last week to be president for 1934-35 was Dr. Walter Lawrence Bierring. 64, rich Des Moines internist, able diagnostician, a descendant of Vitus Jonassen Bering for whom Bering Strait was named. Dr. Bierring reads, writes and fondly speaks Danish, German, French. His polyglot library is one of Des Moines' most extensive. He takes a brief case full of books on his frequent lecture tours of Iowa, reads as his chauffeur drives him between communities. Des Moines hostesses call him a ''natural," conversational entertainer. A 200-lb. six-footer, he recently abandoned crutches, took an artificial leg. On the large grounds of his Des Moines home he has an elaborate court for croquet which he plays with intense fervor. Professionally Dr. Bierring's experience has been broad-- postgraduate studies in Austria, Germany, and France, professor of the theory & practice of medicine at Iowa State and Drake University, and a potent officer of many a medical board.

Glands. To proceed intelligently with the diagnosis & treatment of disease physicians and surgeons now realize that they must have a good, working knowledge of the ductless glands, the balancing of whose hormones control the life, mind and character of an individual. Endocrine medicine is a growing specialty. Next week TIME will report the endocrine pronouncements made at Milwaukee and further will attempt to survey the present knowledge of the glands.

*Of the gross income $860,000 is from advertising and $550,000 membership dues which include a subscription to the Journal.

Next year they meet in Cleveland.

Last week's analysis by the U. S. Census Bureau of New York State's 1932 vital statistics showed that Utica is the only large city in the State where the birth rate increased last year (up to 17.9 in 1932 from 17.7 in 1931 per 1,000 population). New York City's ratio declined to 15.3 from 16.2 per 1,000, worried realtors and landlords who depend on population increases.

Detroit's population averages the youngest among major U. S. cities: 55.68% of its people being under 30 years, according to a Metropolitan Life Insurance study published last week. Tokyo is the most "youthful'' of world capitals, with 67.07% of its people under 30, Berlin and Paris are among least "youthful."

Last week he was in Moscow, "amazed by Soviet progress."

Tannic acid (or tannin) is the leatherizing element in oak, sumach and other plants. It is tannin in tea which makes a strong infusion pucker the mouth.

Since the Committee on Foods started functioning three years ago, it has considered more than 1,600 items, approved 1,075, disapproved 45.

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