Medicine: Capsules, Dec. 15, 1952

The President’s year-old Commission on the Health Needs of the Nation will hand its report to Harry Truman next week, Revealing this. Chairman Paul Magnuson tipped the commission’s hand: instead of recommending a compulsory national health service, it will advocate all-out expansion of voluntary prepayment health plans, with health centers (run by local doctors) dotting the country.

¶ U.S. doctors’ incomes are zooming: a sample of 8,000 of them reported to Medical Economics that they had grossed an average of $25,000 last year, deducted $10,000 for expenses, paid $3,000 taxes, and found $12,000 left. Center of highest earnings: Cleveland, net $15,600; second, St. Louis, $15,000.

¶ Meeting in Denver, the A.M.A. chose Dr. John Maston Travis, 75, of Jacksonville, Texas, as General Practitioner of the Year. Literally a horse & buggy doctor for eight years before he got his first Ford in 1913, Dr. Travis noted that general practice (as distinct from specializadon) is coming back into fashion. He himself has fathered two specialists.

¶ “Woolen underclothes,” snapped Dr. Gerald Gibbens in the Practitioner (London), “are expensive, difficult to wash, and are water-repellent, so that when we move with any energy at all we sweat and stay wet and itchy and smelly for the rest of the day.” His remedy: “dishcloth underclothes,” knitted of cotton yarn. Just as warm as wool, he says, easier to wash, softer—and cheaper, too.