With the practice of medicine becoming increasingly technical, some doctors dream of a day when an electronic brain might take the place of the physician in diagnosing obscure ills. Last week Dr. Winston H. Price told colleagues in the Johns Hopkins Medical Society of some toddling first steps toward developing such a wonderful widget.
Like many other scientists, Biochemist (no M.D.) Price believes that substances in the blood should be indicators of health and disease. But where many recent researchers have relied on enzymes for diagnosis (TIME, Jan. 14, 1957), Price picked the mucoproteins, a little-understood group of complex chemicals...