New England Party

People of the six New England States up to this week had contributed $775,000 of a needed $1,500,000 for a New England Medical Centre. New England lacks such a centre. This one, to be built in Boston, will combine Boston Dispensary & Hospital for Children (oldest medical institution in Boston; established 1796*), Boston Floating Hospital (floats no more since the boat was burned in 1927) and Tufts College Medical School. Its prime purpose: to train family doctors for practice in rural New England. As recently as 1921, 78 Massachusetts towns had no physicians. At present 226 Maine towns have none. Many offer $1,000 to $3,500 bonus to settlers, get no response.

To lay the Centre's cornerstone Channing Harris Cox, onetime (1921-24) Massachusetts governor, chairman of the Centre's money-raisers, sought the oldest family doctor in all the six States. He discovered 150 doctors over 70 and with 50 or more years' practice. Six were nonagenarians. Giving them all a public party in Boston promised good publicity for the project. Last week four dozen oldsters managed to assemble. Of those who could not attend four died in March, four last month. Dr. Abner Orimel Shaw, 93, of Portland, Me., could not travel because he "hurt his knee gardening," six days before the party.

But present were two still able women doctors--Ellen Alfleda Wallace, 77, and Mary Shepherd Danforth, 80, both of Manchester, N. H. Nodding to them venerably were Drs. George W. Gale, 93, of Saugus, Mass., Chester M. Ferrin, 93, of Burlington, Vt., and oldest of them all, probably the oldest medical graduate in the U. S., almost certainly the oldest practitioner, certainly the Medical Centre's cornerstone layer, Merritt Henry Eddy, 97, of Middlebury, Vt. The noise of the police motorcycles and sirens which accompanied the old doctors through Boston, the playing of the Navy Band before the Massachusetts State Capitol overhanging Boston's spring-freshened Common, and the sincere but fulsome laudations there, all wearied Oldest Doctor Eddy so much that he could not eat his party luncheon.

* Massachusetts General Hospital was established 1811.

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