Word: buttons
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...petting frequent injections of a morphine-type drug. Then, during the last three months of his illness, the tormented man found relief. His doctors tried a brand-new type of electrical treatment, and he discovered that he could switch off the worst of his pain simply by pressing a button on a little box in his shirt pocket...
Press-the-button relief depends on the fact that much perception of pain depends, in turn, on electrical nerve impulses passing through the thalamus, a junction box below the base of the brain. If the circuitry in the thalamus is interrupted or disrupted, even the in tractable pain of cancer may be allayed. The Ervin-Mark technique requires drilling holes in the skull (under a general anesthetic), then using elaborate stereoscopic instruments to place four electrodes at selected points in the brain, two of them in the thalamus itself. The electrodes are left in place and cause no pain...
From Dour to Cheery. Their patient, say Drs. Ervin and Mark, was "usually a dour and surly individual," at the best of times. After they fitted him with electrodes and gave him a little transistorized stimulator capable of sending a weak current through his thalamus whenever he pressed a button, he cheerfully reported absence of pain after 15 or 20 minutes. If he kept the current on for 45 minutes to an hour, the pain relief lasted as long as six to eight hours and gave him a night of uninterrupted, pain-free sleep - an invaluable benefit. During the last...
...center" that combines beating, blending, whipping, grinding, juicing and ice crushing, and disappears into a kitchen counter when not in use. It will sell for less than $100. Also on the boards: a dispenser for use in autos that will pop up a lighted cigarette ten seconds after a button is pushed...
Parsley Nosegay. Another pet peeve of Villard's is the widely held picture of professional diplomats as a "striped: pants brigade of effete creatures." Instead of striped pants, today's diplomat wears three-button business suits. Instead of scintillating soirees, he attends paralyzing parties where his innards are assailed by "searing sauces and alcoholic depth bombs." Many is the career man, says Villard, who echoes the plaint of the late French diplomat Jules Henri after a ten-year tour in Washington: "I drank, God help my digestion, 35,000 cocktails in line of duty...