256 Miracles Ahead! 



Plastic materials from the chemists' laboratory are used in- 

 creasingly by surgeons. In cases where injuries have destroyed 

 the hard cartilage that lines the socket of the hip joint, the 

 transparent plastic known as Lucite, or methyl methacrylate 

 resin, serves perfectly. It has also been used to recondition 

 arthritic knuckle joints and jaws. The loss of Japanese silk, 

 needed for sutures to sew wounds, has been made up by 

 nylon, which was introduced on a wide scale in surgery in 

 1943. 



A Treatment for Hypertension 



Delicate nerve operations, in which the surgeon partially 

 severs a nerve, have cured several painful and deadly dis- 

 eases. The neurosurgeon also can frequently clear up hyper- 

 tension, in which blood vessels tighten dangerously and the 

 blood pressure soars. Hypertension long has outranked cancer 

 and tuberculosis as a cause of death, particularly among 

 middle-aged persons. Heparin (from ox lungs) and dicoumarin 

 (found in diseased clover) act to slow up the clotting of 

 blood, thereby permitting surgeons to operate successfully on 

 clotted blood vessels even in certain forms which formerly 

 caused death in over 85 per cent of all cases. 



Regional Anesthesia 



Great progress has been made in the use of regional anes- 

 thesia in place of the "general," which puts you to sleep. One 

 method consists of the continuous injection near the base of 

 the spine of the pain-killing chemical metycaine, which tempo- 

 rarily blocks the nerve pathways for pain in the lower part of 

 the body. It has been successfully used in operations for 

 femoral and inguinal hernia, Caesarean delivery of a baby, set- 



