Medicine: Dangers to Doctors

So rarely do doctors contract the diseases they treat that Dr. Walter Blair Stewart’s attack of infantile paralysis last week was news. Dr. Stewart. 34. had charge of the infantile paralysis cases in Atlantic City’s Municipal Hospital for contagious diseases. The institution has been crowded by the epidemic (now waning) which visited Philadelphia & vicinity (TIME, Sept. 12). Two of Dr. Stewart’s three children—Blair, 3, and Florence. 18 months—caught the disease, are recovering with no observable permanent stigmata. Dr. Stewart, overworked, lost resistance and last week went to bed with infantile paralysis. Probably his only ill effect will be a weak right leg. Puzzling is the apparent immunity of medical men to infectious or contagious diseases. All last year only one physician died of infantile paralysis, scarlet fever, anthrax, parrot fever, or undulant fever. Of 2,952 U. S. doctors who died during the year (average age: 63.8—) heart disease killed 1,065, cerebralhemorrhage 365, pneumonia 312, hardening of the arteries 252, kidney ailments 237, cancer 236, blood poisoning 45, influenza 36. Sixty-four committed suicide (most by shooting, only five by poisoning); 139 were killed accidentally (two took overdoses of medicine; one caught his head in a drawer of a wardrobe trunk; one overbaked himself in an electric cabinet).

*Two were 99: 30 were 90 or more.