Health Game

"Is fish brain food?"

"Will food left in an open tin can be poisoned by the tin?"

"Are raw eggs more easily digested than cooked eggs?"

Such questions, posted on big bulletin boards, are part of a game that in the past year has enticed over 30,000 visitors to the Cleveland Health Museum. Beside each question is a little flapdoor; behind it, visitors find the answer (answer to these three questions: No).* The museum is full of other tricky gadgets: e.g., by turning a crank, a visitor gets a model demonstration of the right and wrong ways to brush teeth; by dialing his age, he learns how much longer (actuarially, but not actually) he may expect to live.

Originator of this modern medicine show is plump, German-born Dr. Bruno Gebhard, onetime curator of the famed Dresden Museum of Hygiene. He produced his first big U.S. hit at New York's World Fair in 1939-40, where his medicine and health show was among the best attended. At the Fair and on the road, his famed "transparent man" gave millions the willies.

Two years ago Showman Gebhard set up his pitch in Cleveland's old Prentiss mansion on Euclid Avenue. Since then, abetted by a weekly radio program and sideshows in bank lobbies, schools, settlement houses, factory lunchrooms, the doctor has succeeded in making Clevelanders exceedingly health-conscious. Last week he made a splash in a bigger puddle: his Health Museum launched its first class for "interns" -- 29 graduate students from North Carolina's School of Public Health, who will teach health the Gebhard way in the U.S., Peru, China.

* Clevelanders also ask their own health questions. Sample question dropped into the museum's question box: I) "What causes snoring and how can it be cured?" Answer: it may be caused by obstruction such as adenoids, or by relaxation of the soft palate, or by position while sleeping; there is no sure cure.

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