Word: spinal
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...preferable to their cures. A case in point is scoliosis, an abnormal curvature of the spine that occurs in childhood. As seen from behind, the spine should appear straight; in scoliosis it has a C-shaped or S-shaped curve. Extreme cases of scoliosis often require fusion of the spinal vertebrae. For most cases the standard treatment is forcible straightening of the spine, with the patient encased for four to six months in a massive, immobilizing plaster cast. To some parents of scoliosis victims, this treatment seems so punishing that they cannot be persuaded to permit it even to save...
Last week Houston Surgeon Paul Harrington was winning converts to a new and happier method. Capable of correcting spinal curvature in people up to the age of 40, Dr. Harrington's technique frees patients from the confines of a cast, permits them to lead normal lives during treatment. Key to Harrington's method is a slender, stainless-steel rod that resembles a soda straw and serves somewhat like a splint. In a complicated, two-hour operation, the curved spine is straightened, then bound into place with one to three rods, which are fastened to the spine with metal...
Looking back, most of his associates date his emergence as a bona fide liberal-and probably as a presidential aspirant-to the years 1955-56. His serious 1954 operation to correct a wartime back injury-double fusion of spinal discs, with complications from Addison's disease-brought Kennedy to the brink of death; last rites of the Catholic Church were pronounced. In the long months of convalescence, he had opportunity to contemplate his political fu ture. (Wife Jacqueline Kennedy rejects the theory that this was his moment of political truth: "That way you can sort...
...this way, they cause a harmless infection. They do this in the digestive tract and render this part of the body an unsuitable seeding ground for future invasions of poliovirus. (The Salk vaccine triggers the production of antibodies, which circulate in the blood and protect the brain and spinal cord against paralysis, but does not sterilize...
...their social inferiority is often the implement of their trade-a handleless broom made by binding together a bundle of twigs. Stooped over this broom, the lowly outcast daily sweeps India's streets and village squares, its courtyards and bedrooms. Not only does this lead to agonizing backaches, spinal curvature and a characteristic cringing posture, but also years of inhaling the clouds of dust stirred up contribute to an alarming pulmonary tuberculosis rate. Yet generations of foreign travelers, "asking why India's sweepers do not use a stand-up broom with a handle, have invariably been answered with...