On the Job

Sir: If OEO Director Sargent Shriver feels as bad as he looks on your cover [May 13], we want him back in the Peace Corps for convalescence.

PAUL J. MAGNARELLA

Bloomington, Ind.

Sir: OEO, VISTA, CAP, TAP, PROP, DWOP, HARYOU and related programs should be combined in a new government agency, Federal Legislation on Poverty (FLOP).

HARVEY N. CHINN

Sacramento, Calif.

Sir: As a counselor who has witnessed some of the good results of the war on poverty, I feel that those who knock it must be as far as Fulbright from "the loneliness of combat."

BERNARD OLEJNICZAK

Pulaski, Wis.

Sir: The primary goal of the war on poverty--to keep the Negro quiet--stems from political motives, not from a humanitarian desire to improve the lot of the poor. Negroes realize this, and this is why they are rebelling against Shriver and his $20,000-a-year men.

ALBERT PARRONI

Madison, Wis.

Sir: LeRoi Jones's Black Arts Repertory Theater in Harlem was not organized, as Shriver seems to wish, to bring white culture to the black man, but to allow the black man to express himself within his own culture. So Jones's plays speak in "language of the gutter." Is not Harlem just one giant gutter? What language should he use? And he writes "vile racist plays." Is not Harlem life centered around vile racism? Should Jones write Broadway musicals?

THOMAS C. WILSON '67

Dartmouth College

Hanover, N.H.

Sir: TIME'S report ignores the relationship of birth control to the success of the poverty programs. I am a Public Health nurse and have seen The Other America. It is a world of hundreds of children lost in the death of rejection and deprivation, women who fear pregnancy, and families who admit that an expected child is unwanted but are resigned to keeping it. Efforts to create a Great Society will never succeed unless the people of poverty are free to prevent the birth of innocent children into a world that cannot provide for them and does not want them.

JANET N. TREAT

Seattle

Bygones Begone

Sir: Thank you for an extremely fair and well-considered Essay on doctors [May 13]. The modern, medically intelligent patient understands that a physician's technologic skill is largely replacing the helpless sympathy of bygone days. The future success of the doctor-patient relationship depends on the patient's understanding of the many difficulties and uncertainties the physician faces, and upon the physician's welcoming the patient into understanding and participation in the care and cure of his own illness.

H. J. ROTHENBERG II

University of Illinois College of Medicine

Chicago

Sir: The physician's average income--$28,380 for a 60-70-hour week--would be $18,000 for a 40-hour week. He must pay $1,200 a year for malpractice and income-protection (against illness) insurance. His hospitalization insurance, retirement and term insurance are not subsidized. Parking fees, upkeep of an expensive professional library, subscriptions, memberships in professional societies (often necessary to get hospital privileges), donations to hospital funds and the house staff, membership in specialty organizations, though tax deductible, cost him $800 a year net. He spends $600 for two weeks of postgraduate education a year. During such absence he has no income, and his office overhead continues. To maintain his medical-school appointment and university-hospital affiliations, he must donate at least 50 teaching hours annually. It is not easy to put a price tag on all this, or on the weekends spent in libraries trying to keep abreast of, perhaps contribute to, medical literature. Is this so enviable an income for a man who spends five to ten years beyond college, often with considerable personal sacrifice, to prepare himself intellectually, emotionally and technically for his career?

GARO S. MATOSSIAN, M.D.

Bethesda, Md.

Sir: No doubt the figure of $28,380 you give as the doctor's earnings is based only on what he reports in his tax return. A more accurate, figure would probably be two to three times that amount. A survey would reveal that doctors keep a minimum amount in bank accounts, try to pay practically all their bills with cash.

ALFRED WYATT

Philadelphia

Sir: Americans would no more accept the old family doctor than they would ride in his horse-and-buggy instead of their automobiles. You ask: "Is the old family doctor dead?" The answer is yes. For this progress the public should be thankful.

W. H. LANGHORNE, M.D.

Pensacola, Fla.

Sir: Over the years I heard all the criticisms you list. After I had been in the hospital and operated on, I knew I had never received so much for so little.

ELINOR J. MCCARTHY

Upper Darby, Pa.

Socratic Dialogue

Sir: TIME deserves high praise for devoting a cover story to college teachers [May 6]. This recognition is what the noble profession of teaching needs today, when our preoccupation with large numbers tends to crowd out our traditional concern for the individual student.

HANS ROSENHAUPT

National Director

Wilson National Fellowship Foundation

Princeton, N.J.

Sir: I take issue with the fatuous bit of anti-intellectualism expressed by Dean May of Yale about the corrupting influence of research scholars. Little wonder that first-rate science education makes little headway when the artsy-tartsy group controls many deaneries. When will some members of the academic establishment recognize that sophisticated, detailed work in the sciences is an essential part of a liberal education? But of course, teachers in the sciences do not have to feign frenzy to stir up interest; science is interesting for its own sake. It seems clear that large segments of the humanities can be made interesting to undergraduates only if actors, not scholars, strut on the platform in front of students.

JOHN BUETTNER-JANUSCH

Associate Professor,

Anatomy and Zoology

Duke University Medical Center

Durham, N.C.

Sir: We protest your unfair reporting of student criticism of Professor Haller. The criticism you quoted was the judgment of only one student, and was so presented in Slate. Slate admitted that some students had praised Haller on several counts. In fact, Slate is at some pains to make it clear that student judgments are entirely personal, and that what one student deplores, another may rave about. As graduate students of Professor Haller's, we would like to redress the balance by stating that we find him a sound, helpful teacher, and a very decent human being who has earned our liking and respect.

WANDA MCCADDON

HELENE M. KNOX

STEPHEN HESSE

TIM TULLOCH

PAMELA KNUTSON

University of California

Berkeley, Calif.

Amplifying the Cardiogram

Sir: The story behind the new look at the electrocardiogram [May 13] is the story of the men who developed the device that made the new look possible--Norman J. Holter and William Glasscock. Jeff Holter was a wartime Navy scientist who returned to his home town of Helena, Mont., to take up the family business, but managed to carry on his lifelong interest in biophysics in a laboratory in an abandoned passenger station of the Great Northern Railway. To work with him, he hired another Montana native, Bill Glasscock, who had just finished his training in physics at Montana State College. Using private funds, secondhand and sometimes makeshift equipment, and winding their own electric motors when they could not buy the ones they needed, they developed a miniaturized slow-speed tape recorder that could be worn by a man to record his electrocardiogram for ten hours. It was they who had the ingenious idea of playing back the electrocardiographic complexes on an oscilloscope screen like a moving picture. This enabled the physician to scan ten hours of data in ten minutes, and made it feasible to utilize the great volume of electrocardiographic information that their recorder obtains. Holter has become a vice chancellor of the University of California at the La Jolla campus. Glasscock carries on at the Holter Research Foundation in Helena--a small laboratory in a small town, not connected with any university, that continues to make valuable scientific contributions.

LAWRENCE E. HINKLE JR., M.D.

N.Y. Hospital-Cornell Medical Center

New York City

Matter of Conscience

Sir: "Lies & Lawyers" [May 13] missed the opportunity to clear the air. Professor Freedman had a right to speak even if he is dead wrong--and he is. But the public is misled about the role of defense lawyers at a time when this role is so vital. There is no valid difference of opinion on whether or not a lawyer should allow his client to commit perjury. The Canons of Ethics are not ambiguous here: Canon 15 commands that the lawyer "obey his own conscience and not that of his client." No duty owed the client by the lawyer or the adversary system requires a lawyer to lie or permit his client to lie in court. No lawyer worthy of the profession will do it. Freedman's view that the lawyer is obligated to permit his client to lie if his client wants to strips the lawyer of all professional claims and presents the lawyer in the distorted but popular image of the "mouthpiece."

SAMUEL DASH

Director

Institute of Criminal Law and Procedure

Georgetown University Law Center

Washington, D.C.

Reading & Writing

Sir: It is good to have you describe dyslexia accurately as both prevalent and remediable [May 13]. The existence of this condition in many intellectually normal Johnnies has been known since Neuropsychiatrist Samuel Orton's studies of Iowa school children, beginning in 1925. The founding of the Orton Society in 1949 anticipated by 17 years the newly formed committee. The society, too, has a nationwide, international membership of physicians, psychologists and educators. Dyslexia is recognized abroad, with intensive research and teaching programs in both Americas, many European centers, Australia and New Zealand.

MARGARET B. RAWSON

President

The Orton Society

Frederick, Md.

Sir: Dyslexia is often a contributing cause of people's need to seek welfare aid. In a program for education of adult, unemployed heads of household, we have found that about 31% of the enrollees have dyslexia. By adapting teaching methods and materials developed for individual tutoring, we have been able to teach these people, in a group, to learn to read and write, which is obviously essential for participation in the "basics" education classes.

HAROLD S. DANENHOWER

Counselor

Work Training Program

U.S. Department of Labor

Santa Barbara, Calif.

Sir: During my elementary school years, I was a poor reader. A poor reader was not a motivated reader. Motivation in 1947, as I remember, came in the form of a swat. I am very pleased to learn that the condition of the poor reader has been recognized as something more than improper motivation.

FREDERICK D. ZIGLER

APO San Francisco 96301

Tea in a Glass

Sir: Cellist Gregor Piatagorsky is wrong. Sergei Rachmaninoff [May 13] did take students. One of them was the well-known pianist, Ruth Slenczynska, who describes her lessons with Rachmaninoff in her book Forbidden Childhood. As a teacher, he was apparently a painstaking technician who, after lessons, served his student tea in a glass.

CHARLES R. SHACKFORD

Visiting Professor of Music

Connecticut College

New London, Conn.

Off to Camp

Sir: No matter what Mrs. Miller [May 13] wears on the Ed Sullivan Show--go-go boots or formal--we'll love her. She is such a camp--how could anyone not love her?

TERRY STARKER

National President

Elva Miller Fan Club

Brooklyn

How Sharper Than A ...

Sir: You say the XB-70 Valkyrie is sometimes known as Cecil the Seasick Sea Serpent "because of technical problems and its droopy, attenuated profile" [May 13]. Now wait just a darn minute! What the heck! Makes a sea serpent sore! When they run into technical problems on my network TV show, I'm known as the XB-70 Valkyrie! Tit for tat!

YOUR DISOBEDIENT SERPENT,

CECIL THE SEA SICK SEA SERPENT

(BOB CLAMPETT)

Hollywood

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