Interracial Clinic

In Georgia's Macon County (pop. 65% Negro), the contrast between the unchanged Old South and the ever-changing New South is evident everywhere. Negro men and women study at famed Tuskegee Institute not far from where a few practitioners of voodoo still do a lively business. Last week Tuskegee Institute presented a scene that was unknown in the Old South and is still unfamiliar in the new. Four hundred Negro and white doctors from all over the U.S. met on the campus for the 43rd annual meeting of the John A. Andrew Clinical Society.* Ignoring segregation, they lived in the same guest houses, ate at the same tables.

When Dr. Booker T. Washington conceived the clinic in 1912 for "the study of morbid conditions" among the South's needy, Southern Negroes had few doctors, hardly any hospitals. But as such "morbid conditions" began to recede, the clinic changed from a kind of emergency school for overworked, ill-equipped doctors to an increasingly learned seminar, is now the country's biggest, most active interracial clinic (others: St. Louis' city-owned Homer G. Phillips and Washington, D.C.'s Freedman's Hospital Clinics). White doctors, once only a handful at Andrew meetings, have been attending in increasing numbers, now make up more than a third of the delegates. Most of last week's meeting was devoted to abstruse professional papers, but delegates also sounded some highly practical notes:

P: Cancer Specialist Dr. George Crile Jr. of Cleveland charged that some doctors are more concerned with fighting cancer than with helping cancer victims, warned that "radical" surgery may be killing more patients than it saves. He advocated a "little philosophy of fatalism" in cancer treatment.

P: Chicago's Dr. Kenneth B. Babcock warned about the necessity of keeping accurate hospital records, cited the case of a 23-year-old woman who was sterilized at her own request. Only reason given in the records: "Moving to Wyoming."

P: Dr. Samuel A. Levine of Harvard Medical School told the convention that relatively few patients with heart disease should have to be sent away from home for expensive diagnosis. In 90% of the cases, a family doctor with proper training should be able to make a diagnosis.

* Named for Governor Andrew of Massachusetts (1861-66), a determined foe of slavery.

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