Medicine: Dementia Praecox Cure?

Last week was no exception to the rule of Brothers Charles Horace & William James Mayo that at any medical meeting they attend they make at least one newsworthy statement. Last week’s occasion: the annual meeting, in Detroit’s Masonic Temple, of the Inter-State Postgraduate Medical Association of North America at which “Dr. Charlie” presided. The news: Dr. Charles H. Mayo’s statement that dementia praecox can be relieved by a drug.

Said he: “Within five years I think we will be able to restore feeble-minded and insane patients to full use of their faculties. Dr. Alfred W. Adson of the University of Minnesota has had miraculous results from the use of an experimental drug. I have seen dementia praecox patients who have been confined to asylums for more than seven years treated with the drug. They have regained complete return of their mental powers for a short time.

“The effect of the drug disappears within three weeks. But I feel certain we are on the road to a discovery which will make the cure permanent.”