Medicine: Capsules, Mar. 12, 1956

¶ Dubbed “Baltimore’s Water Babies” because they were born with a rare kidney disease that required them to drink up to 14 quarts of water a day, Robert Werner, 12, and brother Jacob, 10, got good news last week at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center in Bethesda, Md.: though they will have to go on drinking abnormal amounts, they have a normal life expectancy (another 59 years or more).

¶ To prove their theory that tooth decay comes more from a soft diet than from starches or sugars (TIME, Aug. 6, 1951), Physician Hans H. Neumann and Dentist Nicholas A. Di Salvo of Columbia University betook themselves to Mexico, Guatemala and darkest Peru. They found whole tribes with virtually no cavities, though they lived on a poor diet heavy with carbohydrates. The researchers made their subjects chomp down on a dynamometer, found their bites much more powerful (166 to 184 Ibs.) than those of soft-dieted Americans (127 Ibs.). Their prescription: eat more hard food.

¶ The U.S.S.R.’s Health Minister Maria Kovrigina reported that 3,500,000 Russians suffer from heart disease—43% of all the nation’s invalids. Commonest victims: people in middle age, regardless of occupation; intellectuals and executives, regardless of age.