Physician-in-Ordinary

The personal physician of King Edward VIII, Thomas Jeeves (''Tommy") Horder, Baron Horder of Ashford, steaming into New York Harbor last week, watched U. S. Public Health physicians scrutinize passengers' wrists for early signs of smallpox. Lord Horder was amused. Said he: "They look at wrists because they did it a hundred years ago when diseases such as smallpox were a real danger. From the standpoint of medicine we are no longer so much concerned with acute, fulminating diseases as with chronic diseases. With the wear and tear of life, heart, arterial and nervous diseases are increasing. Acute diseases have almost died out."

Dr. Frederic Ewald Sondern, president of the Medical Society of the State of New York, whose convention His Majesty's Physician-in-Ordinary addressed this week, tried to keep Lord Horder from speaking his mind to ship-news reporters. That self-reliant Briton, who repeatedly has said that "doctors get mighty little prestige without publicity," refused to be shushed, motioned Dr. Sondern to keep quiet, lit a new briar pipe, declared: "It can be said with every emphasis that [King Edward VIII] is in good health. He keeps himself fit, wants very little doctoring and takes so much exercise that sometimes he has to be restrained a little. He flies very little now, because he's very aware of the big responsibilities attached to his office."

Despite Dr. Sondern's attempted interruptions, Lord Horder talked about practically every topic which came to his mind or the minds of the ship reporters. Someone asked him about lengthening human life. Lord Horder: "Don't people live long enough? How to live more happily would be rather more to the point. People are living longer. Every year their expectation of life at any given age is increasing. But what is the use of living longer if we are not happy with economic conditions what they are and the infernal noise of cities, and with machinery we have created running away with us?"

For 20 years "Tommy" Horder has been doctoring the British Royal Family. Among his other patients: Countess Barbara Hutton Haugwitz-Reventlow, Actress Elisabeth Bergner, Prime Minister Andrew Bonar Law, Prime Minister James Ramsay MacDonald. Lord Horder's usual consultation fee is $25. He charged $5,000 to testify to the sanity of Dame Fanny Lucy Houston, eccentric millionairess who repeatedly has tried to help finance British air defense. His offices are in Harley Street.

Knighted in 1918 and raised to the peerage in 1923, Lord Horder is Senior Physician to London's Great St. Bartholomew's Hospital. He is president of Britain's National Birth Control Association, president of the Voluntary Sterilization Society, president of the Council for the Disposition of the Dead, vice president of the Cremation Society. He is chairman of the Anti-Noise League and, with George Bernard Shaw and Herbert George Wells, belongs to the smell Society which seeks to suppress London's stinks. He dislikes health faddists, Nazis and cranks who denounce beer and white bread.

As a medical scientist Lord Horder is above par. Among his authoritative writings are Clinical Pathology in Practice, Cerebro-spinal Fever, Essentials of Medical Diagnosis. He will conclude a three-week visit in the U. S. by a paper on "Thyrotoxicosis" (toxic goitre) before a convention of the American Medical Association in Kansas City.

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