New Surgeon General

President Roosevelt last week appointed, sight unseen, a Surgeon General of the Navy to succeed Charles Edward Riggs, 63. Winner over several potently backed aspirants was Captain Perceval Sherer Rossiter, 58, husky, scowling commanding officer of the Naval Hospital at Washington. He and President Roosevelt had never met before the decision to make him the Navy's highest medical officer. Sufficient was the recommendation of Claude Augustus Swanson, new Secretary of the Navy, Captain Rossiter's longtime friend.

The roster of Surgeon Generals thus stood complete: Hugh Smith Gumming,

U. S. Public Health Service, reappointed this year; Robert Urie Patterson, Army, appointed 1931.

Night before Surgeon General Rossiter took office he summoned his associates at the Naval Hospital for a good-by and gentle carouse. He neither smokes nor drinks. ("The liquor is no good now anyhow.") Their chief request was that he send them "a commanding officer who plays good golf." He shoots 90 to 100 at the Army & Navy Country Club.

Surgeon General Rossiter is third of his family to hold his new rank. Surgeon General Jonathan M. Foltz who served under President Grant was his mother's cousin. His ancestor William Brown was George Washington's Surgeon General at Valley Forge. In January Surgeon General Rossiter completed 30 years in the Navy.

One pang his promotion causes him. He must move from the commodious home at the Naval Hospital where he lives with his wife and daughter Ernestine, 21. Last week they were hunting for a comfortable residence close to Washington. When they find it, they will move in a lot of antique Polish furniture which the Surgeon General picked up while on a Naval mission to Brazil.

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