Medicine: Capsules, Nov. 22, 1954

¶ Doctors’ age-old habit of looking at the patient’s tongue is a waste of time, suggested London’s Dr. Bruno Gans in the British Medical Journal. He found “no connection between a furred tongue and the state of the tonsils, the teeth … a poor appetite or the action of the bowels.”

¶ Despite slow progress toward finding a cause or cure for muscular dystrophy, doctors believe that victims can be helped by muscle training, special gadgets to help them perform everyday tasks, and psychological counseling. To provide these, the Muscular Dystrophy Associations of America opened a big clinic in downtown Los Angeles, hope to open a score like it across the U.S.

¶ In hopes of cutting the nation’s annual bill of $5 billion for ravages of the common cold, businessmen and bankers voted to spend $500,000 through Manhattan’s Common Cold Foundation for basic virus research.