Basil I. Hirschowitz

Therapeutic trial of silicone in peptic ulcer

Summary and conclusionIn a controlled double-blind trial of the therapeutic effectiveness of silicone in patients with duodenal ulcer, the silicone tested was shown to be slightly less effective than placebo medication. The relatively good early response of chronically recurring ulcer disease appeared to be due to the emotional impact of “a new treatment of ulcers.”

Silicones in experimental peptic ulceration

SummaryIn the search for a silicone as uniformly successful as the one used earlier, in preventing and treating experimental peptic ulceration in animals, 30 different silicones were used in pylorus-ligated rats, Mann-Williamson dogs and histamine ulcerated dogs. None were found to be uniformly effective and the initial encouraging results reported by us could not be reproduced with subsequent silicone preparations.

Color Atlas of Endoscopy and Biopsy of the Intestine

Color photographs dominate this book—endoscopic and histologic photographs of high quality and well reproduced—a tribute to the printer as much as the photographers. The ease of obtaining the endoscopic photographs has influenced industrious endoscopists, all of whom have collected a respectable number of both common and rare conditions on color film. Not all of them have been worthy of publication. Any ambitious book like this may be expected to have defects. The introduction is reasonable for endoscopy but finds itself covering enzyme histochemistry, autoradiography, electron microscopy, and scanning electron microscopy in only half a page each. In the sections on the small intestine and on the colon, the book tries to teach by attaching legends varying from two to eight lines to each of 685 pictures. Though there is some attempt at organization, there is no continuity, and few subjects are developed in any useful depth. Some legends describe the