Help of Sea

The 9,200-ton freighter Henri G., Swiss-owned and registered in Liberia, was far out in the Indian Ocean when a 19-year-old seaman fell sick. He suffered pain in swallowing and could not breathe easily; his tonsils were inflamed, swollen and covered with white spots; glands in his neck were swollen; his temperature was 103DEGF.

The Henri G. had a well-stocked medicine chest, and a resourceful officer had used half the pharmacopoeia on the young seaman to no avail. But he had not exhausted his resources: the Henri G. had first-class medical help within easy reach--though 5,000 miles away.

The master prepared a message describing the symptoms and the treatment already given, and concluding: "Please instruct therapy." He ordered "Sparks" to send it to MEDRAD CIRM ROME. With that address, the radio dispatch took precedence over all traffic except S O S. On the second floor of an old yellow building in the center of Rome, an Italian navy radioman handed the message at once to the medical officer on duty.

The doctor concluded that the young seaman had severe tonsillitis. If the case had been more complicated, he would have consulted one of the 50-odd specialists always on call for CIRM (Centre Internazionale Radio-Medico), but he felt competent to handle this one himself. A reference book on the duty desk showed what drugs a Liberian freighter is required to carry. The doctor wrote out a message: Tea and Mineral Water. "Keep the patient in bed with absolute rest. Apply linseed poultices continuously on the swollen jaw. Give intramuscular injection of 500,000 units of penicillin combined with half gram of streptomycin morning and evening. Give only weak tea, orange juice, mineral water for 24 hours." After two days the Henri G. reported: "Patient seems better this morning. Yesterday evening pulse go fever 102 this morning pulse 70 temperature 98.6.'' More exchanges followed. Finally the Henri G.

signaled: "General condition improved.

Tonsils less swollen white spots about disappeared. Tomorrow at Singapore patient will be attended by doctor. Thank you very much." For hundreds of years merchant mariners dreaded illness or injury at sea almost as much as death--and often there was only a fine line between them. The crude, workaday rule became: "If the pain is above the waist, give aspirin; if below, give a purgative." The sailor with raging fever or shattered bones was lucky if he made port alive. If he was unlucky, his body was deep-sixed.

Hands of God. A Sicilian ear-nose-throat specialist named Guido Guida (pronounced Gweeda) got the idea for CIRM in 1935 when he met a sick-looking sailor friend in his native port of Trapani. "I came down with bronchopneumonia en route from New York to Genoa," he explained. "Who cured you?" Guida asked.

"I put myself in the hands of God." With demoniac energy Dr. Guida began organizing, soon got the Italian government to agree to handle radio messages between CIRM and Italian ships at sea and tiny island outposts in the Mediterranean. The service, provided then as now by volunteer doctors, expanded from there. Today 60% of CIRM's "patients" are aboard non-Italian ships and 80% are outside the Mediterranean. Despite a wartime shutdown CIRM has handled 52,500 messages, treated more than 7,500 cases aboard hundreds of ships of 22 nationalities.* "It would cost a small fortune to be treated by some of our world-famous consultants, but we get them for nothing," Guida boasts. Next month, as CIRM celebrates its 26th birthday, it will get a tangible present: construction will start on a modern, 40-room building, to be its new headquarters.

* The U.S. Coast Guard runs a service for the Western Atlantic that can put a doctorless ship with an emergency case in touch with the nearest ship that has a doctor. It handles 150 to 200 cases a year. In both Atlantic and Pacific, the Coast Guard will pass requests for medical service to U.S. Public Health Service hospitals and relay the replies. This system handled 2,000 calls last year.

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