Medicine: Sill Story

Karl K. Kitchen, newspaper colyumist (New York Sun) last week reported that “a few nights ago one of the most eminent physicians in New York received a tel phone message to hurry over to a home in the upper Eighties, off Park Avenue.” The physician “was conducted upstairs to a bathroom on the third floor where a middle-aged woman wrapped in bath towels was seated” on what polite Kolyumist Kitchen called “a window sill, part of the low window having been converted into a seat.” Situation: the sill had been freshly painted; the lady was stuck, to move caused her extreme pain. Solution: the physician called for carpenter’s tools, removed sill & lady, soaked her loose with gasoline.

After the extrication the physician stated: “My fee for a call at this time of night is never less than $25.”

Replied the patient’s sister: “That’s all right. I don’t think that’s a bit excessive under the circumstances. I’m sure that a plumber would have charged us more.”

Kolyumist Kitchen presented his story as fact. It was, however, invented and told (without euphemisms) at the last meeting of the American Society for the Control of Cancer by a waggish Manhattan surgeon.