"I wonder why it is that sign-off's in the college are twice as high as those in the graduate school." Clever undergrads were already beginning to find medical excuses a fine way to cut classes or exams.
New Organization
Appendicitis was considered a major operation in the early years of the century, and death came often during operations. It is a tribute to Bailey's skill as a surgeon that all of the 57 appendix operations during the infirmary's first ten years were successful. Another major disease, diptheria, could claim none of the 63 men struck by it during this period.
Dr. Lee's first move after he had organized a Department of Hygiene in 1914 was to require medical exams for all students in the College. Five years later the Freshman compulsory physical training program went into effect.
The influenza epidemic of 1918 hit Harvard hard. Some 258 men landed in Stillman, but the efforts of a quickly augmented staff held the deaths to six, far below the national average.
A grant from the U. S. Interdepartmental Social Hygiene Board in 1919 gave Lee an opportunity to start courses in Sex and Hygiene. Lee's successor, Dr. Worcester, didn't think the poorly-attended lectures were sufficient. Partly as an attempt to get to know students, he began a series of small nightly talks in the freshman dormitories on the problems of sex. He was amazed at how little they knew.
Soon his soirees were drawing the entire freshman class, despite the righteous indignation of puritanical proctors. Worcester also founded the employees clinic in '32 and had appointed a part-time psychiatrist eight years earlier. He built up an eye clinic and got a doctor to take care of hapless med school men, also.
Unfortunately, his proposal for a $500,- 000 health center met with little success.
A new-extinct institution of the Worcester era was Lyman House. Miss Mabel Lyman recognized the need for a place in which students could convalesce after leaving the infirmary, and donated a home that hundreds of men utilized over a period of 20 years. One of Lyman's House's main functions was to take care of mentally-disturbed students who needed the security of something more than dormitory life. It went out with the war.
With Bock's administration the infirmary fee went up to $20 a year, and a speech clinic was instituted. The depression had left its mark on Harvard.
Thusly, by 1939 the work of the psychiatrists and the late Fatigue Laboratory had become extremely important. In that year a breakdown of mental disorders by class showed that most psychopaths were freshmen. Anxiety neurosis was low in the three bottom classes but very marked among seniors and graduate students. Juniors suffered most from vocational problems.
With the war, Hygiene had fewer Harvard men to care for, but was burdened with the large numbers of service personnel who were shuttled through the University. The returning veterans got its full support, however, with special remedial exercise classes for disabled men and other benefits. When a group of married students moved into Harvard-evens village some 40 miles away the department immediately opened up an infirmary there with a staff of doctors.
Study of Normalty
One of the department's major functions in the last fifteen years has been the Grant Study. Started in 1938 with Grant Foundation Funds the study has probed the development of over 200 normal students to discover regularities in human behavior.
"The study is a departure from usual medical concepts in that we are searching primarily not for the liabilities but for the assets of the person. We have considered such factors as health, physique, heredity, physiology, socio-economics and cultural influences, and such personality factors as may be revealed by interview and psychological testing. . .No one has heretofore been in such a favorable position to observe systematically the consequences of Harvard undergraduate decisions."
Hygiene's widespread precautionary system has prevented the spread of any major epidemic since the great flu rage of 1918. The only recent flare-up was another rash of influenza that was quickly scotched two years ago. In '48 a state-subsidized chest x-ray program found only 3 cases of active tuberculosis out of 7.563 pictures, well below the national average.
The common cold, however, is still the bugaboo. It is twice as prevalent as any other disease, and even the men at Hygiene don't know what to do about it.
Such has been the development of one of the largest University-run health programs in the country. It has many weaknesses and needs, but has been of unparalleled service to the Harvard community. It needs much improvement, but whatever happens the many Corporation-appointed doctors and the rest of Hygiene's large and capable staff will continue to fulfill what Bock calls the department's two main objectives.
"1. The care of the sick, advice, and teaching of common sense principles in regard to health.
"2. Investigation into the problems of man."