CRYMOTHERAPY

Medicine owes its progress in part to the curiosity that constantly stimulates the search for new weapons with which to combat well known diseases or their newer pathologic variations. Among the methods which challenge scientific inquiry is the use of general and local refrigeration and its effects on tumor formations and the relief from pain. An experiment¹ recently conducted in Lenox Hill Hospital, New York, was inspired by the "artificial hibernation treatment" originated by Temple Fay and his associates of Temple University Medical School.² The Philadelphia investigators applied the technic to cancer patients in whom unconsciousness or semiconsciousness had been artificially induced in order to assuage pain. Fay and Smith had been able to refrigerate patients from 10 to 18 degrees below normal for periods varying from a few hours to as many as five days.

In the Lenox Hill Hospital experiment a room with a capacity of