THE WALRUS SAID

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, I've always heard. That's why I wouldn't ordinarily have gone to the Hygiene Building when I woke up one morning shaking with fever. But I knew I was too sick to study for my hour exam the next day, so I thought I'd better go.

By the time I had made my way to the second floor of the Hygiene Building to report my illness it was 12:03 p.m. "All the doctors go away at noon," I was told, "and they don't come back until 1:30. Why didn't you come in the morning?" I said I was too sick, was still sick, and if I couldn't see a doctor I wanted to see somebody. I was directed to a waiting room on the third floor where a nurse took my temperature. It was 100. She told me to go to lunch and come back later.

Taxi Ride

I went to lunch, but I couldn't eat anything. I drank a glass of milk. Then I went to bed and slept until 1:25. When I had climbed to the third floor of the Hygiene Building again, a nurse took my temperature. It was 101. Then I saw a doctor, and he said I should go to the infirmary. While I filled out some forms, the nurse called a taxi.

I was told to go down to the street and wait for the cab. Ten minutes later I rode to Stillman and paid the fare, which doesn't come out of the $15 infirmary fee. I went in and gave the receptionist some forms, and she gave me some forms. Upstairs, I got undressed, filled out a form, and went to bed, and a nurse took my temperature. It was 102.

Then I went to sleep. I awoke when a newsboy went through the ward calling out in a shrill voice, and later when supper came. I didn't eat anything, but I drank a lot of water. I slept on and off into the night, and I felt rotten. Finally, I slept soundly, and when I woke up in the morning I felt a little better, but I still had a sore throat and a headache.

I ate some breakfast, and had just lit a cigarette and pulled up a nurse when the doctor and his secretary came in. The doctor asked me when I first felt sick. I said, "When I first woke up yesterday morning I felt as though I had a fever."

Then the doctor dictated to his secretary, "When he first woke up yesterday morning, the patient felt as though he had a fever." He asked me some more questions and looked at me. After a while he said I had pharangitis.

PBH Steps In

Pretty soon a meek student came to my bed and asked if I needed any books or assignments. He was from Phillips Brooks House. I said no thank you, and I almost felt like crying.

At noon they brought me lunch, and I was so hungry that I ate it all. When a nurse came to take my tray she said, "You ate a good meal."

"Yes," I said, "I hardly have room for the brandy." I smiled weakly. She said they didn't have brandy any more and hadn't since 1900. But she gave me some hot brine to gargle.

The food in Stillman is about the same as it is in the Houses.

Now that I have criticized the food, I will go on to the building itself. The parts of the inside and outside of Stillman I saw were ugly. And I saw nurses walking back and forth through the ward doing little jobs. When they were at one side of the ward, they needed something at the other. And there were so many nurses walking back and forth that I hardly saw the same one twice. And in the bathroom there was a pipe across the mirror at eye level.

Because the radio blared in the ward all day, because my exam was over, and because it was almost time for the weekend, I wanted to leave, and pretty soon they let me. I wonder what would have happened to me if I hadn't had an exam and had stayed in bed to begin with.