Medicine: Machine

Physiologists and physicians made no mockery of a new announcement last week by one Joe H. Pos, civil engineer of Portland, Ore., graduate of the University of Zurich. He said he had constructed an “electric-radio” machine, that regulated blood pressure, whether high or low and he exhibited a box, like a radio receiving-set, of bulbs, coils, condensers, arms, doohickies, thingumbobs, gadgets, gimcracks. On top of the case are two brass arms, one of which constructor Pos points at the back of the patient’s head, the other at his stomach—that is, at the medulla and the solar plexus. On goes a current stepped to very high frequency. Patients “have reported no sensation of warmth, of cold; no sensation of any kind.” “There were no visible emanations nor was a photographic plate fogged when placed in front of the pointers.” Yet for four months various Portland physicians have posed patients before the machine; have noticed blood pressure, in some cases flutter towards normal; have wondered cautiously. Other physicians have studied their pressure charts; have noted that after the first change further variation was negligible; have imputed changes to the resting posture of the patient before the apparatus and to his distraction from his ailments.