Word: comas
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...supreme court of the armed forces is the U.S. Court of Military Appeals in Washington. "COMA," as military lawyers call it, has three civilian judges-Chief Judge Robert E. Quinn, 71, a former state trial judge and ex-Governor of Rhode Island; Paul J. Kilday, 65, a Texan who served 22 years in Congress and helped to write the military justice code as a member of the House Armed Services Committee; and Homer Ferguson, 72, a veteran Detroit trial judge who later served two terms as Republican U.S. Senator from Michigan...
Appointed to 15-year terms by the President, COMA judges automatically review all sentences involving death and all sentences involving flag officers. They accept or reject other appeals as they see fit, hear 30-minute oral arguments, and issue written opinions on "decision days" (Fridays...
...Hoagland's hunch seemed to pay off. Methylphenidate not only roused would-be suicides from their comas, but it was also effective for patients suffering from coma resulting from brain damage and liver failure. For the first time, such patients were able to swallow food and medication, cough up sputum and mucus, thus avoiding one of coma's worst complications, suffocation...
Fears of side effects proved to have been exaggerated. A patient whose skull had been fractured in a three-story fall awoke from a coma 90 seconds after an injection of methylphenidate. Other patients who suffered no side effects from the drug included a five-year-old girl knocked senseless by a swing and a woman who received massive methylphenidate infusions in an eight-hour period to help bring her out of a coma induced by an overdose of an antidepressant. The worst that happened was that two patients vomited and two others were temporarily disoriented...
...also seems to stimulate the respiratory center. But why does methylphenidate appear to be safer than other drugs? Dr. Hoagland suspects that the answers may eventually be traced to the drug's rapid excretion from the bloodstream and into the urine. "But until we understand more about coma," says he, "we cannot hope to understand Ritalin." Meanwhile, despite such gaps in medical knowledge, Dr. Hoagland suggests that emergency rooms should take advantage of the drug's unique qualities...