Medicine: Physiatric Hospital

Physiatrics: The use of natural forces in the treatment of disease (general definition).

Physiatrics: The art of treating metabolic diseases, as diabetes, anemia, high blood pressure, obesity, nephritis (special definition).

Under the special definition and with the leadership of Dr. Frederick Madison Allen, 50, who as a Rockefeller Institute man introduced fasting or undernutrition as a treatment of diabetes, a new kind of specializing hospital is developing in the U. S.—physiatric hospitals. All general hospitals of course treat the metabolic disorders. Dr. Allen was the first to set up a special shop, the Physiatric Institute, in Banker Otto Hermann Kahn’s onetime mansion at Morristown, N. J. That was in 1920. Since then two of his pupils have branched off—Frederick S. Modern, 32, at Arrowhead Springs, San Bernardino County, Calif. (1926) and James Winn Sherrill, 39, at La Jolla, bayside suburb of San Diego, Calif. (1924).

Last week Dr. Allen opened a physiatric hospital in Manhattan—its first.*

*Reaching toward the same physiatric goal are the private hospitals and sanatoriums organized by specialists in internal medicine, with large practices. Such is Dr. Elliott Proctor Joslin’s at Boston and Dr. Orval James Cunningham’s at Kansas City and Cleveland. The Cleveland institution was financed by Henry H. Timken (roller bearings).