Capsules

In a 14-lb., 3,122-page volume rolling off the presses this week, the igth edition of the American Medical Directory (first since 1950), the A.M.A. lists 240,638 physicians in the U.S. and Canada; 46,348 names have been added and 25,397 deleted because of death or retirement. Net gain in the U.S.: 16,784.

Life was far rougher on the nervous system 2,000 years ago than now, said the University of Maryland's Dr. Louis A. M. Krause: "The good old days are today . . . Living with the dread of punishment from any number of gods was much worse than today's problems of how to pay your taxes or buck heavy traffic."

For the first time, alcohol last year killed more Frenchmen than tuberculosis: 17,400 deaths from alcoholism and cirrhosis of the liver, with the rate still going up; 13,300 from TB, with the rate still going down.

Wilhelm Reich, 59, once-famed follower of Sigmund Freud, lately better known for unorthodox sex and energy theories, drew a sentence (suspended) of two years in prison from U.S. District Judge George C. Sweeney in Portland, Me. for violating an injunction by distributing "orgone energy accumulators," touted to heal burns, prevent cancer.

Drugs to lower the blood pressure are being used promiscuously, said Marquette University's Dr. Francis D. Murphy in Postgraduate Medicine. "In some instances . . . the results are detrimental. The ecstasy with which these drugs are reported, sold and used requires considerable modification."

Britain, which has completed only one major hospital since World War II, and has a majority of hospitals over 50 years old, lags far behind Western Europe in facilities for the sick, Liverpool Surgeon James Bagot Oldham complained in a letter to the London Times. Said a colleague: "Our hospitals are like broken-down, back-street pubs compared with modern luxury hotels. The beer is just as good, but that's all you can say in their favor."

Davis Stern, 68, alias "Dr. David Stern," who has practiced medicine in Minnesota off and on since 1919 and claims to have performed 7,000 operations (mostly in state institutions), pleaded guilty to practicing medicine without even a basic science certificate. He at tended medical school at N.Y.U. for only a short time in 1907. With a one-year jail sentence suspended, Stern got permission to leave the state for cancer treatment in Manhattan.

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