Aspirin, Potatoes, Charcoal

Last week a stack of British medical journals, long delayed, reached the U. S. Largely devoted to such grim warlike topics as blood transfusions, epidemics, war neuroses and head injuries, the journals still had space for tidbits of civil medicine. Sample tidbits:

> Doctors have never taken much stock in antiseptic gargles except as soothers. In fact, many consider plain hot water just as good as a fancy mixture. Last fortnight the Lancet reported a "totally unexpected" indictment of aspirin gargles. Quoting laboratory studies, they reported that "appreciable quantities of the calcium of the teeth go into solution when an aspirin gargle is used. . . . Over a number of years [the gargle] might well result in permanent damage to the teeth." However, the Lancet added, the teeth are unharmed if equal quantities of bicarbonate of soda are dissolved with aspirin.

> Peeling potatoes, to modern housewives, is a sin. Potato jackets, they firmly believe, are rich in anti-scurvy Vitamin C, while the potato's inside is little more than starch and water. Last month the British Medical Journal laughed at this assertion, referred to some new research of a food chemist, Mamie Olliver. The ascorbic acid (Vitamin C) content of potatoes, she found, is more than skin deep. In fact, said the Journal, the amount of vitamin "increases from without inwards. This admirable vegetable--. . . by no means to be neglected for its contribution of iron and aneurin [ Vitamin B1 ] --may have a rough exterior, but clearly conceals beneath it a heart of ascorbic acid."

> In a letter to the editor of the Lancet last fortnight, a Glasgow doctor named Stanley Alstead offered an ingenious suggestion for deodorizing underground raid shelters. "I understand," wrote he, "that the stench in a London tube after it has been used for a night is beyond belief. . . . Old-fashioned charcoal [ might ] help in this connexion. Its power in abolishing smells is very considerable and has largely been lost sight of. . . . [ I heard of ]; a pharmacologist who actually put a dead cat into a charcoal box and kept it in his drawing room . . . without its having caused any smell. . . . Perhaps his guests were too polite to say anything, or perhaps they just took smells for granted in the house of a professor of pharmacology. . . . Do you think the experts would consider putting thin slabs of charcoal . . . along the roof of the tube (and other) shelters?"

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