Misery Harbor

Stretching for six blocks along Chicago's West Side are the seven dirty red brick buildings and the one clean yellow brick building of "Misery Harbor" (Cook County Hospital)--largest general hospital in the world. Through the gates of the hospital pour 135,000 charity patients every year, for everything from athlete's foot treatment to blood transfusions.* During the last four years Cook County Hospital has been a battleground for two warring medical factions. Last week a compromise ended the fight.

Medical Superintendent of the huge plant for 25 years was Dr. Karl Albert Meyer. A practical old-school surgeon, Dr. Meyer never required the hospital's army of interns to attend postgraduate classes or lectures, insisted that all young doctors fresh from college needed was "a heavy dose of experience." But the American Medical Association, whose headquarters is Chicago, believes that all interns should taper off into actual practice with at least 80 hours of medical lectures during internship. Over this point Cook County's Dr. Meyer and A.M.A.'s education secretary, Dr. Irving Samuel Cutter, wrangled often. Dr. Meyer budged not a scalpel's length. Consequently, four years ago, the A.M.A. dropped Cook County from its list of approved hospitals, thus automatically cutting off Dr. Meyer's supply of interns from topflight medical schools.

A further irritation to Dr. Cutter & friends was Dr. Meyer's associate, Warden Manus McCloskey, no doctor but a retired brigadier-general of the U. S. Army, appointed to hospital post by the Board of Cook County Commissioners.

Since the dropping of Cook County from the approved hospital list produced no effect on stubborn Dr. Meyer, A.M.A. last spring brought public opinion to bear. An A.M.A.-inspired citizens' committee, investigating management of the hospital, recommended that Dr. Meyer be ousted, hinted that the hospital might be reinstated on the A.M.A.'s list if a new director acceptable to the A.M.A., were chosen. The County Commissioners backed Dr. Meyer, stood pat.

But last week they finally changed their minds, paid both sides off. Terms: 1) Dr. Meyer was marched upstairs to the post of "medical superintendent of all county institutions"; 2) Cook County was promised reinstatement on the A.M.A.'s list sometime around Jan. 1; 3) Surgeon Charles Marshall Davison, son of a former Cook County Hospital surgical chief, warm friend of Dr. Meyer and of A.M.A. propriety as well, was appointed new Cook County director; 4) five medical aides-de-camp were assigned to Dr. Davison. General McCloskey will continue to run only the mechanical departments of the hospital.

Tactful, 43-year-old Dr. Davison hopes to turn the compromise between the hospital and the A.M.A. into a lasting peace. Chicagoans, weary of squabbles and political scandal, hoped that he would plump for a bigger appropriation to buy more bedpans, provide more ward space, keep beds out of corridors, put up a new building to relieve overcrowding.

* In 1937 Cook County set up the first blood bank in the U. S.

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