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Show Two years ago, a New York fell from a The result: a. severely damaged spinal cord which, at the time, meant permanent paralysis. sixth-story-windo- w. Recently, however, a medical pioneer, Dr. Adrian Kantrowitz of Brooklyn, conducted a radical experiment involving the boy. He taped electrodes over four of the lad's key leg muscles. Then an attending' engineer twisted a computer dial; electrical impulses were fed into the muscles and the boy rose gingerly to his feet! In that simple act, he became the first paraplegic in history to stand up by the strength of his own muscles. But the wizardry of medical electronics reaches beyond the problem of paralysis. In modern hospitals, age-ol- d diagnostic instruments are rapidly being replaced by new electronic ones. Instantaneous electronic thermometers and stethoscopes have taken over the jobs of their predecessors. Tiny radio pills, dubbed "gutniks" by doctors, are used to pinpoint intestinal troubles. Swallowed by the patient, they act as miniature radio transmitters, broadlong-unus- time-consumi- ed ng casting temperatures and pressures from the gastrointestinal tract. One radio pill even measures acidity in a newborn baby's stomach and thereby tells the physician what formula to prescribe. Hemorrhages in the stomach can be pinpointed exactly by having the patient swallow a string of tiny Geiger counters. A radioactive substance injected into the blood stream will turn up at the bleeding site and register on a counter. The electrogastrograph, invented in Russia and now undergoing tests in the U.S., detects stomach ulcers and cancers. An electrode is placed on the surface of the abdomen to pick up the minute electrical waves which the stomach sends out when it contracts. Cancerous tissue generates electricity of a different frequency from that of normal tissue, and analysis of these waves indicates the presence and location . Family Weekly, December 30, 1962 of tumors before they are visible by X ray. In dentistry there also is a startling new electronic development Dentists now can implant miniature radio monitors in tooth cavities batteries and all to chart faulty chewing patterns that may be the cause of gum disease. Another electronic diagnostic device is the portable electrocardiograph. Until now, doctors had no means of detecting the kind of heart trouble that shows up only during exercise or in the midst of an emotional crisis. "Patients may show no sign of trouble when they're in your office," says one heart specialist. "It's when they're running for the bus or watching the stock ticker that attacks occur." Today, a patient can wear a portable electrocardiograph, which pipes a continuous record of his heartbeat into a pocket recorder. If a radio broadcasting attach. ment is included, the device can even transmit heartbeat directly into the doctor's officer Via radio and telephone, a doctor in New York recently listened to his itiner- ant patient's heartbeat from California! example But the controlstartling applies to heart block, most of which fells 40,000 people a year. In heart block, communication between the nervous system and heart muscle is blocked. Two years ago, the on)y remedy was use of a gigantic electrical stimulator. Two electrodes, fastened to the chest wall or to the heart muscle itself, sent painful wallops of electrical current through the chest to make the heart contract Surgeons today can actually implant an artificial "pacemaker" in a heart-bloc- k patient The automatic ticker is painless and restores him to normal activity. The pacemaker, a signal generator the size of a cigarette pack is buried in the abdomen just under the skin. Two wires run beneath the skin to the heart where they are sewed directly into the tough muscular part of its wall. When the batteries wear down, the patient undergoes a simple operation to replace them. Another version of the cardiac pace- - Coniin 1 lie .Era o Til n o mectromc Medicine Techniques which have revolutionized U.S. industry now offer new hope for solving the most vexing health problems By LYDIA RATCLIFF |