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Chemotherapy is a very broad term which may well include antibiotics, but in popular parlance the latter term is usually reserved for penicillin, erythromycin, and numerous others, obtained from molds, soil bacteria, and other lowly organisms.

There is no doubt that these deserve the title of wonder drugs. Nevertheless they should be handled with discretion: there are many who have found that the antibiotics are two-edged swords. Some people have penicillin or other antibiotic allergy which can be a torture, harassing the body with a red itching rash or intestinal upset. But mankind, whether holding a medical degree or just shopping over the counter, persists in ignoring the fact that any agent, powerful and active enough to do good to the diseased body, can also do harm. The antibiotics have indeed proved themselves miracle drugs, but they are not universally efficient. They will not stop the common cold and the infections which we all get from time to time and call grippe, the flu, etc.

New brooms sweep clean and these new drugs are often more efficient at first than when the infectious bacteria have become used to them. For instance, so many persons have dosed themselves with penicillin to prevent gonorrhea that a “resistant strain” of gonorrhea has developed which will not respond well to penicillin. Then there are certain bacteria and mold-like organisms which habitually dwell in our bodies without doing harm, apparently because they are held in check by the tougher bacteria which cause our usual infections. When the antibiotics have killed off the toughs then the former Caspar Milquetoasts assert themselves and may do direful things to us while we have no way to check them.

The latest and exceedingly popular drugs are the hormones. Thyroid extract was used in the eighteen-nineties. Insulin came along just after the First World War. Since these two hormones have been observed over long periods of time, their virtues and vices are, we believe, well understood. We may almost sanctify them. As to the many other hormones which have been recognized and a number of which seem to have been produced in pure form, I think that I may characterize them by an old New England expression:  ”All deacons are good, but there’s odds in deacons.”

One should be exceedingly careful in making definite statements about hormones. Cortisone was no sooner produced than it was modified. Hormones are powerful agents for good or evil. Our knowledge of them is increasing rapidly, which should, of course, make for good, but they are difficult to handle. Presumably they are going to be the drugs of the future.

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GENERAL HEALTH

Medical literature shows that 30 to 40 percent of food disorder cases persist for years. Among the famous women who say they have conquered food disorders are the actress Jane Fonda; Ellen Hart Pena, the wife of secretary of Transportation Federico Pena; and Princess Diana of England.

Officials of the National Eating Disorders Screening Program lined up 21 organizations of students and medical professionals. They include the American Psychiatric Association, the National Panhellenic Conference (sororities), USA Gymnastics, the U.S. Public Health Service, the American College Health Association, and the American College of Sports Medicine.

Catherine Baker, coordinator of Eating Disorders Services at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, is very sensitive to the subject. “At age 14,” she explains, “I developed an eating disorder for a few years because I had been assaulted. Eating disorders help us survive pain. I went through a deep depression. I hope the screening program will help students see that these behaviors hurt their lives.”

Becky Guiffre, a student at the University of Maryland at College Park, became bulimic at age 12. “I would not eat for a few days,” she says. “Then I’d gorge, then vomit 10 to 12 times a day. A specialist looked at the lining of my stomach: No lining was left. I can’t say I never mess up now. But, mostly, I am recovered.”

The National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland, estimates that 5 million Americans (nine women for every man among them) have eating disorders. But there are hints of improvement, probably as a result of changes in diet and self-image. The psychologist Todd F. Heatherton and his colleagues from Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, report a drop of almost 10 percent in eating disorders at Harvard/Radcliffe, where students were surveyed in 1982 and again in 1992. Still, they found that one woman in 10 reported symptoms of serious eating problems. Their findings appeared in the November 1995 issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry.

Dr. David Herzog, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and head of the Harvard Eating Disorders Center, is scientific director of the screening program. “Our culture demands thinness,” he says, “especially among women. If the screenings help us identify symptoms before conditions become full-blown, we can help people back to health much earlier.”

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GENERAL HEALTH