Madmen's Manager

Through the psychiatric section of Manhattan's vast Bellevue Hospital each year pass more than 17,000 patients. Through Bellevue's mental hygiene clinic each year pass another 3,000 mental suspects. Of the lot 6,500 are committed to permanent insane asylums or other institutions. Joining this yearly flotsam of mentally and emotionally deranged humanity are the 5,000 who drift through the psychiatric wards of Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn.

To handle those distraught men, women & children costs New York City hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, including $9,000 salary for the manager of all its activities. Although he might have earned several times $9,000 yearly in private practice, Dr. Menas Sarkas Gregory, a hot-tempered, domineering, hardworking, learned little Armenian, long considered the salary worth-while because along with it went the perquisite of power over staff and patients.

Touchy subordinates eventually got Dr. Gregory ousted from his job. Ever since, New York City has sought a successor who fulfilled these requirements: "A man of proved professional, scientific and administrative ability, together with cultural qualifications and personal characteristics which would enable him to represent Bellevue and Kings County Hospital with the dignity which their importance demands, and could command such respect from the community as would make it possible for him to mobilize the force necessary to carry on a progressive and constructive program."

A first search among New York City psychiatrists brought forth no suitable candidate. A second search among New York State psychiatrists likewise failed. After a third search throughout the nation, authorities found a man who graded 85% in their tests. Last week Dr. Karl Murdock Bowman of Boston was appointed manager of New York's madmen.* Born in Kansas 47 years ago, educated in California, Dr. Bowman is a leader in the effort to cure insanity by means of hormones. In the sort of institutional politics which confront him in Manhattan he has had exceptional practice. In Boston where ambitious doctors butt one another unmercifully, Dr. Bowman has managed to hold three competitive teaching jobs simultaneously--in Harvard, Boston University and Simmons College.

*To secure a suitable Commissioner of Health, Mayor LaGuardia two years ago went outside the city and State, picked Dr. John Levi Rice of New Haven, Conn.

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