"A BRAIN BATH"

Evening Post, Issue 20, 23 July 1935, Page 5

"A BRAIN BATH"

FOR ST. VITUS'S DANCE

Eight 'thousand doctors, assembled ■in conference at Atlantic. City recently, listened to a description of a new "medical shower-bath" —prompt-' ly nicknamed a "brain bath"—developed after.five years' research by Dr. George M. Retan, a professor -at Syracuse University School of Medicine, says the "Daily Mail." The bath, technically called a "forced perivascular drainage of the I central nervous system," is said to show a high percentage of cures in cases of infantile paralysis, St. Vitus's Dance, sleeping sickness, and some forms of meningitis. It consists mainly of a wash of ordinary salt and water with antiseptic made by combining tannic acid and a form of carbonic acid, and is injected into a vein at the ankle, while simultaneously fluid is drawn from the spinal column through a needle inserted at the base of the spine. Six cases of infantile paralysis were treated at Syracuse, it was stated. Four recovered immediately, one recovered after several treatments, and the other died. Of three persons suffering from sleeping sickness, two recovered immediately, while the third died of pneumonia. In treatment for St. Vitus's Dance fifteen out of eighteen patients were, it was said, cured completely, one showed marked improvement, and the two others showed no effects.