Word: kountze
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Nobody Went Home. One place where the opportunities for adding health to age are being exploited with signal success is St. Louis. There, Dr. William B. Kountz, 60, a native Missourian, talked Washington University into putting up $300 to start a research program at the old city infirmary. In 1943 it was shifted to St. Louis Chronic Hospital, where about half the 1,600 patients are afflicted with the disorder of old age. Kountz has raised enough funds (including one $2,000,000 bequest) so that the university has never had to add to its original piddling investment...
...early days at the center," Dr. Kountz recalls, "the death rate was 15% to 20% a year. Nobody-and I mean nobody-was going home from the hospital. It was the old story: 'terminal care.' Now we have cut the death rate in half. Every month, ten to 15 elderly patients are returned to their homes and to industry, or to healthy retirement...
...still controversial sex-hormone regimen has played the biggest part in achieving this result. Explains Dr. Kountz: "The layman equates these hormones with sex, but equally important is the part they play in nutrition and the ability of the body to use the food it gets. As we grow old, if we don't have a proper hormone balance, the body burns up its own protein. We lose carbohydrates, fat and minerals as well. Even brain tissue is absorbed. We found that old people suffered this loss even if they were eating properly. Then we found out why-they...
...Kountz's first patients for hormone treatment was a woman of 78. She was bearded, diabetic and grouchy; she often used her wooden leg as a club when a doctor approached her. She was put on estrogens. After three months, he recalls, "she became one of the sweetest persons in the hospital. She began to menstruate regularly, her beard went away, and she went home...
Even in Dr. Kountz's enthusiastic estimation, hormones do not suffice in themselves. He cites a depressed man in his 70s. "On hormones, he started coming around, but something was still bothering him. We found out that he was an inveterate gambler. I got him a job with a stock and bond company, and it made him a young man again. In four years he made $200,000. Now he's 93 and retired in Florida. He says his biggest regret is that he didn't grow old sooner...