Medicine: Dreft for Stomach Ulcers

An amazing new ten-day cure for stomach ulcers—which at one time or another afflict 15% of U.S. adults—has just been developed by two Northwestern University doctors. It employs Procter & Gamble's "Dreft," which is technically not a soap but a "detergent" (TIME, Jan. 5) that acts like soap.

In 1936 Dr. H. B. Bull found by chance that sodium lauryl sulfate (main ingredient of "Dreft") denatures the molecules of egg albumen. He reasoned that it might also inactivate the powerful digestive juice, pepsin. Pepsin is a protein much like egg albumen. It causes ulcers by digesting the lining of nervous stomachs and...

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