Attacks Medical Service

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

Harvard is a superb institution. Its teaching staff is incomparable. besides, it has fabulous facilities. We all recognize these attributes. But in spite of them, I have one minor complaint. Mind you, it's only trivial, but I feel that the administration should spare a little of its valuable time to examine this trifling-complaint. It only involves the lives of the students.

Last Friday evening at the Hemenway Gym, during a scheduled basketball practice game, Paul Haake of Stoughton 4 suffered a compound fracture and laceration of the upper arm with profuse bleeding. The fellows of both teams immediately succored their injured companion. They applied pressure upon the arm pressure point, improvised a crude tourniquet, attempted to make Paul comfortable, and to alleviate and treat his shock. All this with their limited Knowledge of first aid. This is as it should be. But all this without any first aid equipment: no tourniquets, no blankets, no splints, no gauze, no bandages. This is as it should not be. But this lack of first aid equipment is not all. It remains incidental to the most appalling fact. At the moment of the accident, other students ran down two flights of stairs and called Stillman Infirmary, reporting the accident and its seriousness. The Infirmary said they would send a doctor immediately. The College Infirmary took one half an hour to get a doctor to the accident. In one half hour an injured person can be left with many permanent scars! In one half hour an an injured person can die! And yet no doctor. This boy paid his medical bill. Where is the medical service? This inefficient medical service lurks as a danger to all students of Harvard College. I urge the administration, not only as a student but as a doctor's son, to act immediately to safeguard the interests of the students. There should be a permanent resident physician available at all times. Please attend to this affair. Why wait for a disaster? Louis Sharpe '54