Medicine: Capsules, Mar. 12, 1973

> Whether with black coffee or enforced abstinence, sobering up an intoxicated alcoholic is a slow process that usually takes anywhere from eight to 48 hours. Now a team of Lynn, Mass., emergency-room physicians has found a way to do the job faster. Drs. Louis Kunian, James Wasco and Lawrence Hulefeld of Lynn Hospital report in Emergency Medicine that intravenous infusions of fructose, a sugar found in fruit, can sober up a drunk with unusual speed. However the fructose works—the doctors speculate that it may inhibit alcohol's effects on the nervous system —the...

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