Health, and Equipment Repaired at Dillon

When the crowd is heading home after the big game toward cocktail parties, and dances, trouble is just beginning for the men in Dillon Field House who take care of the health and equipment of Harvard's outdoor athletes.

Through the portals of the imposing Colonial structure, whose red brick walls, terraced cupola, and white cornices are in harmony with the architecture of the seven Houses, daily troop a legion of athletes from fields conveniently nearby; and while their equipment is repaired and scrubbed snow-white by a privately-owned laundry, their bruises and sprains are attended by a staff of trainers and doctors who know most of the boys by their first names, and are even more familiar with their injuries.

Harvard an Industry

When the, medical and training department was first set up on the ground floor of the Field House with instructions to prevent all foreseeable accidents and to cure all the inevitable ones, the American Medical Association, which licenses such places, could not find a classification for it, since no other University boasted one of comparable size. It was too large and well equipped to be a dressing station, and it wasn't quite big enough to be a hospital. So they compromised, and it has been known ever since as a first class industrial hospital.

The chief of the organization, whose name reads Doctor Thorndike on his M.D. diploma but who has never been called anything but Gus around the training room, has been treating injured Crimson athletes since 1931. When a gridiron warrior doesn't get on his feet after a play during one of the Varsity games and a tense silence hushes the anxious crowds, Gus is the business-like doctor in a long black overcoat who hurries out on the field ot examine the injury.

Took Conant's Picture

On any field where physical contact sports are going on a doctor is always on the sidelines supervising the game, and that, coupled with close examination of equipment and the condition of the players, is one reason why the number of casualties is very small, but "still too frequent," the scrupulous Doctor Thorndike will add. Unorganized sports like skiing, where every man is on his own and crackups are frequent, are the most dangerous, as many an athlete from the President of the University to the most humble novice has discovered.

Joe Murphy, who is the head X-ray man and physiotherapist for the Medical Room, has been taking plates ever since 1935, and it was he who put Conant under the "camera" several years ago to see if any bones had been cracked when the President's giddy career down an icy slope came to a sudden end.

May Explode "Athlete's Heart"

Not the least of Joe's many duties is a twenty-year research job which will some day prove conclusively whether or not there is any such thing as an "athlete's heart." Most of the doctors around the training room think that no such disease exists, and that any heart trouble which afflicts former athletes comes as a result of over-enthusiasm for strenuous sports after years spent accumulating fat be behind an office desk.

During the football season the busiest part of the day for trainers and rub-down men under Jim Cox comes in the early part of the afternoon when the Varsity is turning out for practice. Joe Murphy, who runs the supply room, estimates that the trainers wind 100 miles of tape around uncertain joints during the course of the year, and the amount of energy put into rubbing down swollen limbs is incalculable.

Radios Heat Injuries

The training room and bathing room are littered with machines of strange appearance whose function is to heat injured parts to speed circulation and healing. "Deep heat" treatment for injuries too far beneath the skin to respond to the heat lamp or hot water is given by short and long wave diathermy by means of two machines analogous to radio transmitters.

All sorts of baths and sprays cover the floor of the hydrotherapy or bathing room. A specially constructed V-shaped "sitz" bath accomodates a pulled groin when an injured player settles his posterior into it. Two tin bath-tubs resembling those in vogue about 1875 are used to cool or heat a hurt leg, their whirlpools providing a gentle massage which increases the blood circulation. A number of pranksters have had epic water battles with the "fire hose" machine, used by the trainers to message pulled backs with its high-pressure stream.

50 M.P.H. Standing Still

Only two men, Joe Murphy and John Bronk (the "Bronk"), a former trainer, claim to have worked the speedometer on the up-hill stationary bicycle up to fifty miles an hour, but many a bored athlete of renown has spent hours toiling along at 10 m.p.h. to limber up a stiff muscle.

When Jim Cox, the head trainer, first came to the Dillon Field House he found that the training room was more of a recreation center than a medical station and that his charges, led by Kevorkian, much preferred a water-fight to a massage. After a struggle, order and a workman-like atmosphere were restored and horseplay put in its place, to break forth only occasionally, as when Torby MacDonald put a missile through one of the windows during a recent tape-ball fight.

The training room is only one part of a very elaborate organization at the Dillon Field House. The facilities for cleaning, repairing, and dispensing equipment are an industry in themselves and find no counterpart in any other American college.

Equipment Secured

Every day bale upon bale of towels, sweatshirts, football togs, underwear, and other equipment is dumped into three huge machines in a University laundry whose equal only the Army can boast. Two barrels of soap even larger than the one John Hawkins hid in are consumed every week in washing the equipment; plenty of "sour" is added to spike any and all odors; and the bleach removes stains and discoloring.

Frank Consentino, who has been in the shoe business for 20 years, though he is only 28 years old, and who boasts that he is a member of the third generation of living shoemakers, runs the repair shop. Frankie prides himself not only on a complete array of modern repairing machines, but also on his own many inventions fitted to the specific needs of athletic equipment.

Frankie Turns Cleats

Before the repair shop invented a special machine for turning cleats University used to provide two pairs of football shoes for every man, one equipped with mud cleats, and the other with standard shot ones. Now Frankie can switch cleats on the shoes of the entire squad within an hour if the weather man predicts rain.

The equipment room, which is under the genial direction of Jim Farrell, makes a policy of never being short on anything. At the start of the season this year 120 pigskins were waiting to be inflated whenever any of the numerous teams needed one. Javelins are stocked row on row, and there are enough shots to weary the muscles of every putter in Harvard. Besides this Jim sees to it that enough clothes are on hand to provide every athletic with a complete change of shirt, underwear, and shorts every two days.