CONFIDENTIAL FILE

Webster Wasn't Hep to County General

Webster's, I admit, is pretty vague in defining the word "hospital."

The dictionary says: "An institution in which patients or injured persons are given medical or surgical care."

That plainly leaves a lot of room for personal interpretation.

Perhaps
I'm an incurable romanticist, but for me the word almost always
conjures up visions of Florence Nightingales in crisp starched uniforms.

And I see steely eyed surgeons. Confident Dr. Kildare types who can quote the Hippocratic oath at the drop of a suture.

But you'll notice I said "almost always."

There are other times when I consider the Los Angeles County General Hospital.

And
I consider it often. Every time I get a telephone call or a letter from
someone who's learned through painful experience how loosely Webster is
translated by those who approve General Hospital's budget.

I'll concede that some of the complaints I've received come from people who've suffered nothing more than imagined abuses.

But
the one I heard yesterday can't be brushed off that lightly. It was
made to me by a veteran newspaperman. A friend of mine and a guy I
consider qualified as a competent observer. One who reports his facts
accurately.

Last Tuesday he was called upon to take an elderly woman to General Hospital after she fractured her ankle.

He
and the woman, who was in intense pain, arrived in the hospital's
admitting room at 10:50 p.m. to find seven other patients waiting.

One man had apparently been scalded. Another was gashed across the eye. All appeared to require immediate care.

But for some reason that's not the way they do things at General.

Everyone, regardless of pain, was first required to take a chest X-ray.

"Policy," an aide explained to the reporter. "For TB, you know."

Two
hours and 15 minutes after admission, a sympathetic, overworked nurse
finally manged to put aside clerical duties long enough to give the
injured woman medication to ease the hurt.

In the interim, the patient was X-rayed
again, this time for the ankle. The picture was taken by another
overloaded member of the hospital staff, a technician working alone
despite the fact that six well-equipped X-ray rooms went unused.

"They cut our staff," the nurse said. "And when we griped, they built another X-ray room."

The ankle X-ray was taken at 12:58 a.m.

Two hours and 17 minutes later, the reporter wanted to know why his charge hadn't received further treatment.

"I'm terribly sorry," the nurse replied, "but there isn't a doctor available to read the negatives and prescribe treatment."

Then at Long, Long Last

When
a physician did arrive at 4 a.m., he was gentle, practiced and
efficient. Within minutes the X-rays were read and those awaiting
treatment cared for.

The reporter and the exhausted woman left the hospital at 4:45 a.m., 5 hours and 55 minutes after they'd entered.

But he couldn't leave behind a feeling of helpless indignation.

"I
just wish," he told me, "that one of our county supervisors with a
busted ankle had to rely on General Hospital for treatment. Then we'd
get some action."

Confidential File

So Wyatt Outdrawed Him With a Potater

Stay a moment and consider with me the potato. Or, if you prefer, Solanum tuberosum, a perennial plant of the nightshade family.

(You
can be damn sure I didn't put all that dough into a set of
encyclopedias just to impress my neighbors with the size of my library.)

The potato is a vegetable with a stormy past and an uncertain future.

Since its earliest cultivation, it has been plagued by the Colorado beetle and, for a brief period in history, by a band of 18th
century food faddists called the SPUDS (Society for the Prevention of
Unclean Diet), who were convinced that potatoes contained a drug that
weakened the will.

They claimed it was being foisted on an unsuspecting public by subversives who were plotting to take over the nation.

In fact, though, the potato has served us well. We owe it much.

Without it, for example, Laura Scudder
would have been just another housewife. And Pat O'Brien would be just
another next-to-closing clog dancer at the County Down Fair, if his
ancestors hadn't lammed to escape the Great Potato Famine of '46.

This
vegetable has also made a deep impact on my life. As a child, I was
force-fed it almost every meal by a doting mother who believed that
without this daily staple I would fall dead of beriberi. Or, at least,
run a high fever from la grippe.

When the sure signs of nausea
would warn me that one more gulp of milk-soaked mashed potato would
result in catastrophe, my mother would invariably admonish:

"Look at what you left on your plate. Think of the poor, starving Chinese. What wouldn't they give for that!"

Consequently, I cannot shake the vague feeling that somehow I, and not Mao Tsetung, am responsible for the poor, starving Chinese. I also came to manhood with an almost irrational respect for the potato.

That's why I was shocked recently when a lovely lady from the Cossman Toy Co. stopped by with a couple of samples of her firm's newest product-the Spud Gun.

"You just dig the barrel into a potato, pull it out and fire," she explained. "It shoots little potato pellets up to 50 feet.

 "It's not just a toy, either. It's a public service. There's a very serious surplus this year.

"We've
already sold almost a million guns," she went on happily. "We estimate
that if every child shoots up to 12 pounds, it'll move 12 million
pounds out of the surplus warehouses and get the economy back in shape.

Fraught With Economicalties

There's
another purpose," she concluded. "Potato consumption is down 50% under
last year. There's a desperate need to make America potato conscious
again. We feel the Spud Gun will do it."

And I feel she's right. You can hardly be unconscious of the potato when some kid is firing one at you from ambush.

Anyway, I dutifully took the Spud Guns home to my youngsters.

They're having a ball with them. But I'm not happy.

Every
time they take careful aim and shoot each other right between the eyes,
I find myself thinking, with the same old guilty feeling, about the
poor, starving Chinese.