Capsules

P: Though most physicians agree that alcohol in moderation has some medicinal uses, a group of them who disagree strongly met last week at the College of Medical Evangelists (run by Seventh-Day Adventists) in Loma Linda, Calif. They applauded Chicago's Physiologist Andrew Conway Ivy (no Adventist but a Methodist) when he berated alcohol in any form as a "habit-forming . . . and dangerous drug," which, used to excess, "is degrading to human reason and dignity."

P: Chronic high blood pressure is not necessarily a bar to long life. Two Boston doctors who have followed the cases of 100 patients for as long as 34 years report 71 still living, and only five seriously handicapped. Early high-blood-pressure readings are often misleading, they say, and physicians should be careful not to make their patients "blood-pressure neurotics" by overdoctoring them.

P: Though Negroes are only 10% of the U.S. population, they number 45% of narcotic addicts and 75% among the juvenile addicts. The reason, Psychiatrist Walter Adams told the (Negro) National Medical Association in Chicago last week, is to be found in race discrimination: the use of narcotics is a cover-up for feelings of inferiority, insecurity or depression.

P: After getting a new production line into operation at Danville, Pa. (TIME, Aug. 18), Merck & Co. cut the price of cortisone by 40%, to $9.60 a gram wholesale (three years ago it was $200). Two other producers decided to follow suit.

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