Michael A. Cooper '57 recounts his first night of Accident Room work: the first case was dead on arrival, and then, two hours later, a small boy straggled in shortly after he had swallowed a dime. But Cooper says Accident Room business is often more brisk than it was the night of his indoctrination. Less than three weeks ago, two College Volunteers, Robert B. Hilton '58 and Nobbie Smith '57 donated while blood directly to an accident victim because the hospital's blood bank had no B-negative in supply.

Tension with Police

Cooper also notes a measure of tension between Cambridge police, who bring in many emergency cases, and the hospital staff. About a month ago, police apprehended a fugitive by shooting him in the leg. "This guy's set to walk," they told doctors, who promptly hustled him off to bed. Sometime later, the prisoner, who indeed was "set" to walk, eluded his guard and lept from a hospital window. Fleet-footed policemen pursued him and within a block's distance managed to score again--this time a direct hit in the other leg. Stuart Cope, Adams House junior, made the admittance report for the second time, and according to one account, police insisted the itinerant patient be chained to the bed. The guard was doubled.

Most of the Accident Room work is hardly this exciting, Cooper says. The nervous strain of alternating between continuous waiting and concentrated action leaves the Volunteer weary after his three-hour period on duty. "The excitement doesn't leave you keyed up, but just exhausted," he says. "Seeing people in agony, you think that you're as far above animals as they are above inert matter. The suffering person has no defenses left, his inhibitions are gone. Often he seems to lose the dignity that makes him human."

Volunteer aid in hospitals is not a new development. The movement probably first began in 1869 when the Ladies Visiting Committee of MGH organized a skeletal service which was the basis of the Volunteer Department, formally recognized there in 1941. From Massachusetts General and a few other pioneer hospitals, the idea spread, particularly during the two World Wars, through almost all large city hospitals and many community and private institutions. The Phillips Brooks contingent lay virtually dormant until the start of the current term when Reiss, one of 30 Volunteers in 1954-55, decided to reorganize the program. Registration in September jumped form last lear's 30 to a total of 124. Probably one of the most efficient social services in the College, the General Hospitals Program reports only two unexcused absences in the 660 occasions when workers have had hospital duties to fulfill.

Sensitive Direction

The Volunteers' remarkable record can be attributed to two factors; first, their serious interest in the work of medicine, and secondly, an acutely sensitive direction of the immense organization. Director Reiss has the help of six PBH Social Services Committee members. Mary Costanza '58 and M. Joyce Gahm '58 respectively coordinate Mount Auburn Hospital Volunteers and are promoting the new Tufts College extension of the PBH program; John L. Higgins '57 organizes Cambridge City workers, and Morton F. Goldberg '58 is in charge of PBH work at Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary; David Chernof '57 directs the Program's relations with the University, arranges Lamont displays, handicraft exhibits, and publicity; and Jonathan P. Marget '58, secretary, handles the vast amount of paper work involved in placing the Volunteers in their proper places in each of the five hospitals every week. Margaret E. Putney '56, PBH vice-president in charge of General Hospitals, assists Reiss in integrating the Program with other Brooks House activities.

In addition to the regular weekly hospital work, Reiss now has four special projects in the planning stage which he hopes will increase the effectiveness of the Volunteers:

1) Volunteers are researching tutoring methods for hospitalized youngsters to supplement the State Education Department's rudimentary "three 'r's" with music and fine arts. They have enlisted the support of the University's Music and Fine Arts departments and the Graduate School of Education, and hope of come up with practical suggestions to the five hospitals by February. The Boston School of Occupational Therapy, affiliated with Tufts, has loaned ten members of its graduating class to help the PBH project.

2) Dr. Lendon Snedeker '25, assistant administrator at Children's Hospital, asked the program to aid in a study of his staff's wasted motions. Children's has recently completed a new wing, and he wants to insure the greatest efficiency in the reorganization and probable additions to the paid personnel. Volunteers will compile statistics for interpretation by the hospital's efficiency expert.

3) PBH General Hospital Volunteers have roused Tufts and Jackson Colleges, in nearby Medford, with the same enthusiasm that has stirred the College and Radcliffe. Reiss estimates that Tufts recruits may well equal the PBH volunteer group and although Massachusetts General needs no additional volunteers, each of the other four hospitals has room for many more. Cambridge City, for instance, has no volunteers at all on Saturdays and during vacations.

4) Reiss looks forward to an official link with the University's Medical School. He sees no reason why the program's pre-med students cannot align their interests with those of the Medical School in some arrangement of practical preparation. He has started preliminary investigation and shortly expects to contact Medical School faculty members.

No one seems quite sure why the Great Awakening in volunteer hospital work has been so abrupt. Both the General and Mental Hospital Programs have sprung to life since September, 1954. Perhaps the most valid explanation for the resurgence of interest comes from Roger W. Brown, assistant professor of Social Psychology and Social Relations head tutor.

Stress of Competition

Brown believes that students feel the stress of individual competition in both curricular and extra-curricular activities. The inevitable result, he suspects, is that more students are disappointed than are gratified. Hence they have turned to an activity which is both non-competitive and altruistic in character. Social progress in the last few years has taken much of the old stuff from campus political movements and hospital work gives students a new form of expression, he says.