Six-Shooter

The Navy captain in his starched whites held an odd-looking gun in his hand as he faced the advancing line of men, women and children in a Warwick, R. I. fire station last week. As each approached, the captain applied the gun to an arm and fired a shot. The projectile, emerging with a muzzle velocity of 1,000 ft. per second (faster than a .45 pistol bullet), made a hole only 1 200 in. in diameter. If the crowd became too big, one of the captain's aides took up another of his six guns and went to work. In one day they shot 11,108 Rhode Islanders in the arm.

Most of the U.S. has shown a gratifying decline in paralytic poliomyelitis this year, but Rhode Island has a polio epidemic: So cases with five deaths since June 8. The Navy captain was Iowa-born Edward Abel Anderson, 47, who wears the Medical Corps' insigne above the four stripes on his shoulder boards. His "gun" was a Hypospray injector made by Detroit's R. P. Scherer Corp., modified to meet Dr. Anderson's suggestions. His ammunition was Salk vaccine.

The Hypospray, first offered to doctors in 1947, has found few takers outside the Navy. It is costly: $2,000 a copy originally, now down to $1,200. Its greatest advantage is speed. It can be loaded with enough vaccine for 55 shots, can give 1,200 an hour, does not need to be sterilized for every shot, nor have a needle changed. For the patient, it is preferable because the injection feels like a slight, instantaneous pinprick.

Dr. Anderson is the spray gun's hottest marksman, has used it to give vaccinations against typhoid in Brazil, cholera in Pakistan and Thailand, yellow fever in the Sudan, influenza at U.S. Navy stations. Now medical officer of the Quonset Point Naval Air Station. Dr. Anderson responded to Rhode Island health officers' appeals for help in mass immunization by working at makeshift clinics on his own time. He had so many takers that he has had to squeeze in his Air Station work in the mornings, now gives afternoons and evenings to the civilian clinics, which are scheduled to run through Sept. 15. By then, most of the state's susceptible population will have had two Salk inoculations, an estimated 150,000 shots by spray gun and an equal number by the conventional needle.

Last week in the Warwick fire station. the counter on Dr. Anderson's gun clicked off the 500,00cth shot that he and his corpsmen have given in the past six years. Soon after, Dr. Anderson had to quit and let a corpsman relieve him; the trigger ringer on his right hand, despite a golfer's glove, was too painfully blistered for him to carry on.

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