National Affairs: Dr. Snyder’s Patient

Flying to Denver last fortnight to dedicate Mamie Doud Eisenhower Park, the First Lady left her Brown Palace Hotel suite only twice in five days, limited her dedicatory remarks to a few words of thanks. Last week Denver’s sharp-eyed observers learned why her schedule had been sharply curtailed. White House Physician Howard McC. Snyder, who had accompanied her west, accompanied her also to Washington’s Walter Reed Army Hospital, stood by while an Army gynecologist did a two-hour hysterectomy.

Eight hours after the operation, still groggy from the anesthesia, Mamie had a visitor. Carrying a bouquet of “Mamie Pink” carnations, President Eisenhower paid a half-hour visit to the same three-room VIP suite where he convalesced last year from his operation for ileitis. He spent most of the time talking to the doctors, reported later at his press conference that Mrs. Eisenhower “medically [was] doing splendidly.” (There was no sign of malignancy.) But, he added with a grin, “this does not mean . . . that her disposition is necessarily so good.”

By week’s end Mamie Eisenhower’s disposition was understandably better. She was able to take a few steps around the room to inspect the cards and flowers that began pouring in after the White House announced her operation. Ahead lay a much more pleasant convalescence: late this month she will accompany the President to Newport, R.I. for a vacation beside the sea.