Surgeons Meet

Surgeons, anesthetists and hospital managers met in Chicago last week to study, discuss, argue, play and be seen. Being seen was important, for the only ways in which a professional man can spread his reputation is by getting research published, demonstrating at a clinic, having his patients gossip about his work, and presenting himself to his colleagues for personal study. So some 3,000 men and a few women took time to display themselves at Chicago. The big affair of the week was the Clinical Congress of the American College of Surgeons, whose Fellows include all the good practitioners of the country. Attending members studied and discussed hospital improvement plans, cancer research, industrial surgery, treatment of fractures, eye-ear-nose-&-throat surgery, care of crippled children. Acrimonious was the discussion on hospitals. Charged William James Mayo: "I would call attention to the clandestine--if I may use so opprobious a term--method of increasing hospital income by exorbitant charges for the use of the operating room. . . ." Passionately retorted Director Warren Pearl Morrill of the Maine General Hospital, Portland: "If some surgeons would forego the pomp and circumstances demanded for their regal round of the wards, A remarkable scene was enacted by one Herman Schulenberg, 53, Milwaukee mechanic. Four years ago his cancerous larynx was removed. Last week Joseph Clark Beck, his Chicago surgeon, led him before the Fellows. First the man rasped in a monotone. Then he began to finger his throat, and inflected words ensued: "After I lost my voice I could not bear it--to be a dummy, to talk with my hands. . . . I used to play the organ and knew how you can force air through a thing and get sounds. . . . There I got my idea. It took lots of practice to learn to talk again. The flesh had to be hardened and trained." Regally gossipy was Florestan Aguilar, Viscount of Casa Aguilar, of Madrid, in Chicago to be made an Honorary Fellow of the American College of Surgeons. He is a specialist in oral surgery and therefore frequently needed by King Alfonso XIII's family. His precious observations of the King he shared with his U. S. confreres. King Alfonso, he recounted, "takes life as it comes and hence he enjoys it to the utmost. . . . I am delighted to tell you that my Sovereign has never been a man of regular habits. He is not so stupid. He has never been a slave to regular diet, regular sleep, regular exercise, or regular anything else. Consequently, at the age of 43, Alfonso is in beautiful health and he has never had a serious illness."