Tax Lien

Does cheating the Government make a doctor unfit to treat his patients? The question had Philadelphia's suburbia split right down its Main Line last week. Center of the storm: Surgeon Clare C. Hodge, 46, who came home last September after serving three months in prison for defrauding the U.S. of $166,000 in income taxes (between 1943 and 1950, he took in unreported fees totaling $432,000, paid taxes totaling only $23,000.

Said Hodge: "God gave me these hands and endowed them with some surgical ability [to help] suffering humanity." With that, he applied for reinstatement at Bryn Mawr Hospital. The directors turned him down just before Christmas. Then the storm broke. Expressing their "shock and displeasure," 27 of Bryn Mawr's medical staff urged the directors to back down; a majority of the hospital's other staff members joined in protest. Local organizations passed pro-Hodge resolutions. Seven local Protestant churchmen sent the directors an open letter: "[Hodge] has been judged, punished and returned to us . . . Shall we deny him any occasion to employ his special talent for constructive enterprise?"

There was no denying that Hodge had a special talent. Iowa-born, he interned at Philadelphia's Pennsylvania Hospital, studied surgery at Boston's Lahey Clinic before he moved to Bryn Mawr in 1940. Said one fan: "I am the father of three children whom I love deeply. Should they require surgery, I would unhesitatingly ask Dr. Hodge to perform that operation." But Philadelphia Attorney Laurence H. Eldredge commended the Bryn Mawr board and said: "It is not enough that Hodge can serve a patient with satisfactory results. He must also be a man of integrity." The American College of Surgeons dropped Hodge from its rolls, and the Philadelphia Academy of Surgery praised Bryn Mawr for turning him down.

Last week, the embattled doctor tried to get away from Bryn Mawr. He applied for a position as surgeon at Philadelphia's St. Joseph's Hospital, a 200-bed institution run by the Roman Catholic Order of Felician Sisters. Without having been formally accepted, Hodge had already performed one operation at St. Joseph's, and more were scheduled. Nevertheless, at week's end Hodge's supporters were still hoping to bring him back to Bryn Mawr.

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