Burden at Night

New Haven was shocked last year when a 14-year-old girl tried, and failed, to rouse any Connecticut doctors on the telephone one night. Her mother, brother and sister had been overcome by gas, and might have died if the youngster had not had the wit to call the police. Stirred up by the case, the New Haven Medical Association decided to set up a central emergency service such as other U.S. communities now have. When it polled its members, inviting promises of cooperation, the association got a shock of its own.

Questionnaires went to all the 415 doctors in the New Haven area, but 175 did not even bother to reply. Of the 240 who did reply, 79 refused to serve. (Only 30 had a good excuse: as full-time members of Yale's medical faculty, they are not engaged in practice.) Chairman Samuel Spinner of the association's Committee on Emergency Medical Service spelled it out: "Every physician should do his part so that the burden does not fall on the few." But last week, when the plan went into effect, the "few" were shouldering the burden: 76 general practitioners plus 85 specialists agreed to cooperate in night emergencies.

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