Congress's Doctor

Plumpish Dr. George Wehnes Calver, official attending physician to the U. S. Senate and House of Representatives, talked very small last week. Friends in both chambers spoke to him affectionately: "It is a low-down mean shame. . . ." But Dr. Calver is too discreet a man to discuss the upping of his rank and pay while the matter is in hot dispute. He begged leave to say not a word on the subject and retired to the two small, photograph-decked rooms under the Capitol's dome which constitute his office, examining room and dispensary. Dr. Calver draws $292.50 a month as a commander in the Navy on special duty with Congress.

This special session of Congress Com-mander Calver and the two enlisted men who help him have not been very busy. They maintain health charts for all Congressmen and frequently check up on the members' hearts and blood pressure. Most calls have been for colds and constipation. But last Congress Dr. Calver's tiny force earned its salt. Most dramatic incident occurred when Representative Edward Everett Eslick dropped dead while addressing the House (TIME, June 27, 1932). Dr. Calver worked vainly to restore him. More successful was he when Representatives James William Collier of Mississippi, Mell G. Underwood of Ohio and William I. Sirovich of New York were taken ill at the Capitol.

The worst thing he has had to deal with lately has been the amebic dysentery which Representatives Tom D. McKeown of Oklahoma, William E. Hess of Ohio and John C. Lehr of Michigan contracted in Chicago last October while studying bankruptcy receiverships there. Kenneth Romney, House sergeant-at-arms, who was with the Representatives, also caught the disease. Dr. Calver sent them all to Naval Hospital in Washington for a full course of treatment.

The House of Representatives considers Dr. Calver its own attendant and gratefully this spring passed a resolution to promote him from a commander to a rear-admiral. Senators, who make fewer calls on Dr. Calver, resolved to make him a temporary captain while the Navy kept him detailed to duty at the Capitol. In conference the House and Senate compromised on a bill promoting Dr. Calver to the permanent rank and pay of a Navy captain.

That compromise, however, has not yet been brought back for a vote, because the potent Navy lobby is bitterly opposing the jumping of Commander Calver over his seagoing seniors. Washington private practitioners resent Dr. Calver's free treatment to Congressional secretaries, wives, families, visitors. However, he gives non-members only emergency treatments. Regular patients are primarily Senators and Representatives (Vice President Garner is an assiduous client) and a few of their former colleagues, like onetime Vice President Charles Curtis. A stronger hindrance developed last week. John Raymond McCarl, comptroller-general, let it be known that Congress could promote Dr. Calver to anything it liked, but that he would not pay him one cent more than he gets now. The hindrance apparently is not insurmountable. Congressmen recalled that President Wilson made Commander Gary Travers Grayson a rear-admiral, that President Harding made Dr. Charles E. Sawyer a brigadier-general, that President Coolidge made Major James Francis Coupal a colonel, that President Hoover made Lieut.-Commander Joel Thompson Boone a commander. If Presidents can have their personal physicians promoted over seniors in service, Representatives and Senators saw no reason why they could not do likewise with Dr. George Wehnes Calver.

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