Seasoned with Salt

Most health columns in the daily press are dry-as-dust affairs in which the writer-doctor takes himself, his profession and his pen-patients with equal seriousness. An outstanding exception is the column which runs four days a week in the Providence Journal and Bulletin: never stuffy, often irreverent, it reflects the Yankee horse sense of its author, Dr. Peter Pineo Chase.

Dr. Chase's horse sense comes out, literally, in his answer to a woman who wrote in recently about chlorophyll pills as deodorants. "You should have been with me in my schooldays," he replied, "when I took my horse, Pilot, in from the field where he had been cropping chlorophyll-laden grass and drove him on a hot day until he reeked with sweat. He stank." To a reader who asked whether she should buy a mattress board to make her bed harder, Dr. Chase wrote: "Personally, I have always liked a sloppy, soft bed . . ."

Poets of the Radiator? As salty as the Cape Cod village of Barnstable where he was born, Dr. Chase began practicing in Providence after World War I and soon had a solid reputation in surgery. One-time president of both his city and state medical societies (and an amateur authority on Samuel Johnson--TIME, June 4, 1951), he began to write for the Journal and Bulletin 5 1/2 years ago, at 68.

A frank fresh-air fanatic, Chase inveighs against central heating. Once he quoted part of Whittier's Snowbound ("We sat the clean-winged hearth about"), and asked: "Will anybody ever write anything like that about a steam radiator?" Again: "I personally believe that colds are infectious and I am in greatest danger in overheated houses crowded with people. However, I am not deluding myself that I can sell this to the rest of you."

Infallible Profession? To a man who asked whether there is a change of life for men in which their drives and interests change, Dr. Chase cited St. Augustine: "We do not forsake our sins. Our sins forsake us." After a brisk medical discussion he concluded: "Sure, we men have a change of life, all the way from 36 to 96. So what?" To a woman who wrote that she would like to marry a doctor, and wanted to meet one, he gave this advice: "Go into nursing."

Dr. Chase has no illusions about the infallibility of his own profession. When a woman asked him, "Please write about ridiculitis," he replied: "You have misspelled the word, which is radiculitis, but I think your spelling is just as good because I don't take much stock in there being any such thing as radiculitis" (inflammation of nerve roots in the spine). From a column devoted to dermatology: "A good friend of mine who knows as much about skin diseases as anyone in these parts says that nobody knows much about skin diseases."

The Journal and Bulletin (circ. 187,545) are pleased with Columnist Chase. Surveys show that 21% of men readers and 53% of the women read him--more than read the Hollywood columns, advice to the lovelorn, or even Pogo.

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