The Pride of Aberdeen

Aberdeen, a typical prairie town in South Dakota, had seen nothing like it since the introduction of the ring-necked pheasant turned the town into a hunter's paradise. Telegrams poured in, including greetings from the President of the U.S. and Senator Karl Mundt. Newsmen, radio and TV crews were everywhere. St. Luke's Hospital swarmed with guards trying to control the unusual traffic. The quintuplets born to Mary Ann Fischer, 30, wife of a billing clerk in a wholesale grocery, were thriving, and the town was afire with pride.

New Washers. Hastily christened by Bishop Lambert A. Hoch while they were still on the critical list, the quints seemed well past most of the dangers of prematurity last week.* Her pallor heightened by fright and emphasized by a blue robe, Mrs. Fischer submitted to a round of predictable nonsense when the hospital held a press conference in its crowded basement cafeteria. "Would you like to have five again?" The answer was blunt and honest: "I told them upstairs I'd rather go into the delivery room again than come down here."

Husband Andrew Fischer took over and was asked his recipe for successfully raising five children. "The most important part of the bringing up," he said, "is a good wife." Then he went home and made an understandable bid for privacy by having his phone cut off.

But there was no slowing the celebration down. Gifts for the Fischer babies flooded Aberdeen. They ranged from cattle feed for the cows that Andrew Fischer now milks by hand for his five older children to baby shoes and a fur-trimmed coat for Mrs. Fischer. Through its chamber of commerce, Aberdeen decided to build a $100,000 house for the Fischers. And as the loot piled up, Income Tax Boss Mortimer Caplin reminded his agents that all such unsolicited gifts, for which the Fischers performed no service, were taxfree. But taxes would be due on a $75,000 Saturday Evening Post contract for short-term magazine and TV rights.

Fast Film. Doctors studying the birth and early days of the Fischer quints noted that there had been only one entirely new principle available for their care since the birth of the Dionne quints in 1934: potent and selective antibacterial drugs (sulfas and antibiotics) were on hand to guard against infection.

But at every step there were refinements and improvements in more familiar medical techniques. The X ray which first showed Dr. James A. Berbos that Mrs. Fischer was bearing a fivesome was taken with high-speed film developed since World War II--safer for both mother and babies. The light anesthesia used during delivery was better controlled and adjusted. Doctors now know that the right oxygen concentration for preemies is around 40%. And the five little Fischers were promptly placed in five Isolettes, incubators developed in 1948 to give automatic and precise control of temperature, humidity and oxygen strength. There they will stay for a while before graduating to the open air--and, in about two months, to that big new house that the town is building for them.

* Equally thriving: Venezuela's Prieto quints, still in Maracaibo's University Hospital.

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