Capsules

P:Decubitus ulcers, or bedsores, have for centuries plagued patients and stubbornly resisted the efforts of doctors to cure them. But it appears that the sores, which result from the continuous pressure of the body against the bed, are succumbing to new versions of an almost forgotten medical approach:

sweetness. Dr. James Barnes Jr., of the Glenn Dale Hospital in Glenn Dale, Md., reports in the A.M.A. Journal that a high concentration of common granulated sugar, applied daily to bedsores under a special airtight bandage, clears them up. Dr. Robert Blomfield of Chelsea, England, reports similar results when he uses honey. Neither doctor is sure why his treatment works, though Barnes believes that sugar may boost the inflammatory reaction essential to the healing process. Barnes found that sugar produced a 78% cure rate when applied to the bedsores of 180 patients treated during a five-year period. Blomfield says that it works better than any other medication he has used.

P: Stuck off by itself in the desert between Tucson and the Mexican border, legendary and tiny (pop. 1,200) Tombstone, Ariz., has so little to attract a doctor that its people have been without local medical care for much of the past eight years. But now the community where Wyatt Earp shot it out with desperadoes is doctorless no longer. An osteopath named Patrick Lorey, 36, has decided to live in the town for at least seven years. Lorey's decision was not completely voluntary. Convicted last fall of selling amphetamines, Lorey could have been sent to prison. But a state superior court judge, noting that Lorey had moved to Tombstone seven weeks before his sentence was set, decided to free him on probation--if he remained in town for the duration of his seven-year sentence. Lorey, who would like to practice in a large hospital, is adjusting to his virtual exile. Some citizens of the once brawling town at first expressed concern about having a doctor with a record of drug problems, but now the townspeople are calling him Doctor Pat.

P: Tay-Sachs disease, a genetic ailment that occurs almost exclusively among Jews of Eastern European extraction, is a lethal legacy that produces profound mental deterioration by age two, death by age four. Until now, it has been possible to identify--and warn --parents who run the risk of producing a Tay-Sachs child only by means of blood tests. But a Chicago ophthalmologist has an easier way. Dr. Edward Cotlier has found that the enzyme hexosaminidase A, which is absent in Tay-Sachs victims, can be measured in human tears. Collier has detected normal levels of the enzyme in the tears of 50 healthy volunteers, low levels in 14 parents who carried the defective genes, and none in four children with the disease. His finding holds out hope for early identification of couples who could have Tay-Sachs children. Instead of taking blood tests, they could collect tears on treated paper that would be mailed to laboratories for analysis.

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