All that research just to discover morning breath?

Halitosis Clinic Studies Causes of Bad Breath

To discover the cause and cure of offensive breath in human beings, a novel halitosis clinic has just been set up at the Northwestern University Dental School in Chicago, Ill. Patients exhale through their mouths into a tube kept cold enough to solidify organic substances in the breath as they pass through. The frozen mass is then liquefied and tested by means of an osmoscope, an instrument shaped like a piccolo, which measures the concentrations of odors. Tests made so far indicate that offensive breath is most noticeable in the morning and that it tends to increase in concentration with advancing age.

Hay Fever Falls Before Zinc Ions

HAY FEVER, that mysterious malady that deprives thousands of persons of their enjoyment of summer-time, is slowly yielding before the assaults of science.

The malady, which attacks the mucous membrane of the nose and throat, causing symptoms not unlike a severe head cold, is usually caused by pollen of a number of plants, the chief offender being ragweed.

At the University College Hospital, London, hay fever is being successfully treated by zinc ionization. An electric current is employed to release the zinc ions from a solution of zinc sulphate. These are passed to the patient by means of tubes, counteracting the irritation.

Eye Ailments Cured by Dry Heat

EYE inflammations are being successfully treated with dry heat by a new and ingenious apparatus introduced at the annual meeting of the American College of Proctology.

The electric controlling unit automatically heats and circulates water through hollow rubber pads held over the eyes by the patient. The temperature of this water is constantly controlled by the physician.

CROSS-EYES NOW CURED BY PICTURES
Curing cross-eyes is play for youthful patients at a New York eye clinic, opened recently. A child places a pair of attractive picture slides in an instrument resembling an old-fashioned stereoscope and manipulates the device to make the pictures fuse together. Thus he tries to trap a lion in a cage or catch a butterfly in a net. Through corrective exercises of this sort, a cure is often effected without recourse to a surgical operation, which hitherto was nearly always considered necessary.

I couldn’t agree more.

MORNING NOT BEST WORK TIME
Contrary to long established belief, the ability of most persons to work more swiftly and accurately on rising from a night’s sleep is not as great as it may be at other times. This was one of the many surprising facts discovered during a new series of sleep tests conducted by Dr. Nathaniel Kleitman of the University of Chicago. In his experiments he used the electrical recording instruments shown above. With them, he charted the effects upon sleepers of alcohol and drugs.

Bed Helps Blood Circulate
OFFERING almost immediate relief to heart victims a new motor-driven bed, which rocks the patient in teeter board fashion, has been developed for hospital use. It is the belief of leading medical practitioners that the rocking effect of the “Vasocillator,” as the bed is called, will bring persons suffering from a heart attack through the crisis substaining them until the heart is once more able to function normally.

Mobile Plastic Eye that moves in coordination with the wearer’s good eye is held at left by Fritz Jordan who developed it in association with Dr. A. D. Ruedemann, chief eye surgeon of the Cleveland Clinic. Mobility is obtained by sewing the eye muscles to a mesh of tantalum metal covering the back of the plastic eye.

Apparently soy milk was already on the market in 1936. From the bottom of the third page: “A milk substitute made from soy beans which can be digested by patients who are upset by ordinary milk is now on the market…

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Food or Poison?

Physicians Must Turn Detectives To Find the Causes of Ailments Produced by Eating, Breathing, Or Touching Common Substances By Frederic Damrau, M. D.

NOT long ago, a man arrived at the famous Mayo Clinic, at Rochester, Minn. This was his curious story: Every morning at eleven o’clock, no matter whether he was in a business conference or driving his car, he dropped asleep!

Dr. Walter Alvarez, of the clinic, followed clew after clew. Finally, he traced the ailment back to the man’s breakfast, to his cup of coffee, and even to the cream in his morning beverage. When the patient eliminated cream from his coffee, the trouble disappeared!
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Life-Saving, A One-Man Operation

AMONG the many exhibits on display recently at the Salon Nautique, Paris, was the latest in life-saving apparatus.

Where formerly it required the aid of two men to complete the job of artificial respiration, the new apparatus needs only one man to resuscitate the water victim. The operator straps the bellows beneath the unconscious man’s chest, lays him face downward, adjusts the head-rest to align the windpipe, then rocks the handle of the respirator.

Loud-Speaker Wrecks Sleep in Study of Slumber Habits

Sleep-wrecking is done scientifically with foghorns and loud-speakers at the University of Chicago, where a study of sleeping habits is in progress. At various stages of slumber, the foghorn starts a din and the reaction of the sleeping student is noted. Wakened, he jots down a few notes and then goes back to sleep. The study has demonstrated that sleep is deepest during the first ten minutes, and quite deep during the first hour or two of the night. There is more movement in the last half of the night, and it is easier to waken the subject immediately after a change in position than ten minutes later. To record movements during sleep, apparatus was installed by which every motion shifted weights and pulleys and wrote the record on a graph.

In 1938 New York had roughly seven million people and the FDNY had ONE ambulance. Wow.

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New Hospital on Wheels

By John E. Lodge

BRINGS FIRST AID TO MEN WHO FIGHT NEW YORK’S FIRES FIVE-ALARM FIRE! Thirty-five engines and trucks racing through the streets before dawn. Three hundred crack smoke eaters battling a block-square conflagration. That was the scene, a few weeks ago, when 3,000,000 feet of lumber in a big Brooklyn, N.Y., yard turned into billowing clouds of smoke and darting streamers of flame.

For hours, the firemen fought to keep the blaze from spreading. One man was carried out with a broken leg. Another was hurried from the scene with blood streaming from a gashed hand. Still others staggered about with eyes so inflamed they could hardly see. By the time the blaze was under control, twenty-one firemen were on the injured list. In aiding them, New York City’s new $10,000 fire ambulance—an amazingly complete, ninety-mile-an-hour hospital on wheels—played an important part. The big fire was its spectacular initiation into service. Read the rest of this entry »

I would say no to the first and maybe to the second. However there is some dispute about Willetta Huggins’ abilities. Her claims were tested and at least partially validated by reputable scientists, of the day. However, Willetta fully recovered her hearing and vision a few years later and attributed the miraculous recovery to the healing power of Christian Science which lends a lot of credence to the idea that she never was blind or deaf.

At least that’s what it says in The Unseen Minority: A Social History of Blindness in the United States

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Can We See with Our Noses And Hear with Our Fingers?

Amazing Feats of 17-Year-Old Blind and Deaf Girl, Who Smells Colors and Feels Sound, Convince Scientists that Unused Powers Lie Asleep in Our Senses

CAN we learn to see with our noses? Can we learn to hear with our finger tips? Can we develop eyes in the backs of our heads or wherever else we happen to need them?

The amazing case of Willetta Huggins, the 17-year-old blind and deaf girl of Janesville, Wis., makes these questions much less fantastic than they would have seemed a year ago. For Willetta can do some of these things.
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