Capsules

P: Parents who cajole their children into taking aspirin by telling them it is candy are asking for trouble, warned the New York City department of health after the second New York child in six weeks had died from an overdose of aspirin. Reason: children may gulp down a bottle of aspirin (often flavored or colored) with disastrous results. The board's advice: 1) don't give aspirin--even the weaker "children's aspirin"--to children except on doctor's orders; 2) keep aspirin containers out of children's reach.

P: Bone taken from young cows has "proved very satisfactory so far for grafting in humans," reported Drs. William B. Fischer and Irvin Clayton of Northwestern University Medical School. Calf-bone grafting has been used on twelve patients, whose own bone cells are believed to have formed new crystals around the scaffolding of the calf bone. Advantages of calf bone: it is available in unlimited quantities, is cheap and simple to use.

P: X-ray motion pictures have passed from the experimental to the practical phase, the Radiological Society of North America was told at its 41st annual meeting in Chicago. The X-ray movies verify accurately what diagnostic physicians have only been able to guess about, e.g., the swallowing process (which doctors found varies greatly from person to person), the stomach's pushing action (gastric peristalsis), speech defects, heart anomalies.

P: Great Britain decided to postpone for a year its ban on the manufacture of heroin, which was due to go into effect at year's end. British doctors--and M.P.'s of both parties--had fought the ban vehemently, insisting that heroin is needed for medical purposes, chiefly as a pain killer. The government acted after 70-year-old Laborite Lord Jowitt,/- onetime (1945-51) Lord High Chancellor, raised a fine point in the House of Lords: although the government had the legal power to control the manufacture of heroin, did it have the right to ban it? The Eden government succumbed, revoked its ban pending further study.

/- Also noted for his book, The Strange Case of Alger Hiss (1953), in which he reviewed the evidence in the Hiss trials, suggested that 1) Hiss was innocent and 2) U.S. justice was poorly administered.

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