Political Doctor

A physician's public service may be rewarded by glory (viz. Lord Dawson of Penn, personal physician to King George and the Prince of Wales), fun (viz. the late Brigadier-General Charles E. Sawyer, President Harding's physician), power (viz. Surgeon William Schroeder Jr., head of New York City's Sanitary Commission, who orders Mayor James John Walker's frequent health excursions). Or, as Mayor Walker's brother Dr. William Henry Walker last week disclosed, a diligent doctor may derive more negotiable profit from his political contacts. During the past five years Dr. Walker has banked alone or in joint account with others $431,258.92. Officially the Walker methods were new to the American Medical Association and the Committee on the Costs of Medical Care, organizations which are striving mightily to keep doctors from poverty. Dr. Walker, a corpulent, quiet contrast to his slim, glib brother, made his explanations to Judge Samuel Seabury, inquisitor of the Scandals of New York (see p. 13).

Dr. William Henry Walker, the Mayor's older brother, was graduated from Georgetown University Medical School (Washington) in 1902. In 1914 he began to specialize in workmen's compensation cases, usually representing employers and insurance companies.

Currently he is employed by the New York City Department of Education. For $6,500 a year he gives physical examinations to teachers and other employes. This work requires comparatively little time. He also acts as medical examiner for the New York City Employees' Retirement System, at $25 for each of 18 to 20 meetings a year. Another sideline: The Madison Square Garden Club and Curley's Wrestling Club pay him $50 every time he examines boxers and wrestlers for physical fitness before bouts.

The bulk of Dr. Walker's time and energy has gone to his big workmen's compensation practice. Employers must protect their employes against injury, a necessity which gives employment to specialists like Dr. Walker. Testified he: ''When there was work going on, why I saw the claim men." Dr. Walker hired doctors and nurses to tend this vast, personally solicited industrial accident practice. Cases which his hirelings could not handle he farmed out to other doctors in industrial work.

Those doctors, in turn, referred to businesslike Dr. Walker a profitable part of their own practice. Among his chief clients for this referred work have been four doctors to whom Mayor Walker's official subordinates send most of the City's injured employes: Thomas Joseph Grant O'Mara, 60; Harris Feinberg, 35; Alfred Bartholomew Cassasa, 37; Edward Lizarian Brennan, 32. With Drs. Cassasa and Feinberg Dr. Walker maintained joint offices, with Drs. Feinberg and Brennan joint bank accounts.

The accident work of the four city physicians was tremendous. Morris L. Strauss, assistant corporation counsel in charge of the City Workmen's Compensation Bureau, who designated the four, generally accepted their bills without question. The doctors themselves remarkably often did not know for what they were charging. Dr. Feinberg, for example, charged $47 for four x-rays of a workman's hand, and nine office calls "for repair of wounds." The man had an injured right toe. Dr. Cassasa once charged for "strapping a foot" of an employe who had hurt his left thumb. Another employe cut a finger of his right hand. The bill to the city was $55-- for 15 visits at $2 each and $25 for a sacroiliac support. For such services from the beginning of 1929 to Jan. 31, 1932, New York City paid Dr. Cassasa $59,169.75, Dr. Brennan $33,609.90, Dr. Feinberg $56,563.25, Dr. O'Mara $66,658.65--a total of $216,001.55. Often--Inquisitor Seabury demonstrated --as soon as they received checks from the city, they sent checks for exactly half the amounts to Mayor James John Walker's busy brother Dr. William Henry Walker.

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