Harvard Medical Unit Now On Australian Battlefront

Many an important anti-physical-culturist waiting for a doctor's reprieve at 15 Holyoke Street has muttered a demand for an explanation of the acute M.D. shortage. The explanation is a simple one and it comes from the south Pacific battle-front.

One of America's most brilliant collections of surgeons and physicians is gathered in a small, northern Australian town, ready to operate in what will be one of the largest hospitals, civil of Military, in the Southern Hemisphere. They are members of the famous Harvard unit, and each is a professor in his particular branch of medical science.

The hospital is being built on a slight rise overlooking a fertile valley. A temporary storehouse holds thousands of pounds' worth of medicines and the latest most elaborate scientific equipment the world can offer. The hospital is being rushed up first to 1000-bed capacity, then to double that number. Eventually it will cover 40 acres of land.

To it will go members of the American fighting forces needing the most skilled curative or neuropathic treatment. Special hospital planes, capable of carrying about 30 cases, will fly them from advanced field hospitals, where preliminary treatment has been carried out.

Thorndike Heads Staff

The staff, which is led by Major Augustus Thorndike, Jr., former Surgeon of the Department of Hygiene and the H.A.A. includes members of well-known Boston families, many of them graduates of the College and the Medical School and embraces surgeons specializing in general operations, septic surgery, orthopedic surgery, ear, eye, nose and throat, neurosis, urology, X-ray, and on the medical side, in communicable diseases, cardiac troubles, gastritis, intestinal tropical medicine, and neuro-psychiatric treatment.

Special attention is being paid to mental and nervous rehabilitation of sufferers from war shocks, which the peacefulness of natural surrounding will aid.

The specialists are most interested in the latest British experiments in using gramophone records of shricking bombs, human cries, gunfire, and circus to make victims relive hours of terror and knew that they are not in actual danger.