Harvard Doctor, Back from War, Impressed by Civilian Casualties

After a three-week tour of South Vietnamese hospitals, John D. Constable '47, an instructor of surgery at the Medical School, has come back "greatly impressed by the large number of civilian casualties who can't even make it to the hospitals."

"I tried to go uninvolved," Dr. Constable, one of a three-man mission sent by the Committee of Responsibility, Inc. to study civilian casualties, said yesterday. "But the large number of amputations and burns, many to children, make it hard to stay uninvolved," he added.

The mission's actual purpose was to find war-injured children "suitable for medical treatment in the United States," their nine-page report, released in New York yesterday, revealed.

"By our very strict criteria, we found 15 children with residual deformities that cannot be surgically aided anywhere in Vietnam. But we saw a total of 273 war-injured children, and 1176 adults, which, to me, is a terrible number of people being injured," Dr. Constable said.

The other members of the mission were Henry Mayer, associated with Stanford's Medical School, and Theodore Tapper, of the University of Pennsylvania Medical School, who, like Dr. Constable, is a graduate of the Harvard Medical School.

In their report, the three doctors estimated the civilian casualties for 1967 at 150,000, out of which only 50,000 will reach hospitals. "But it is really impossible to tell how many never get any medical aid, so that 150,000 is a hazy figure," Dr. Constable explained.

The doctors found hospital conditions "far below U.S. Standards." Dr. Constable pointed out that "there are lots of flies around, no uniformed nurses, and generally very crowded conditions." He said that the mission saw no civilians with third-degree burns (the most serious), and therefore concluded that people so afflicted just never managed to get to the hospitals.

Those that do reach hospitals often get there just in time to have an arm or leg amputated. "Patients pack their wounds with water buffalo dung, and, by the time they get to a doctor, amputation is the only alternative," Dr. Constable explained.