The Human Touch

THE other evening I witnessed a performance of “Men in White,” that very simple and very powerful play which Sidney Kingsley wrote and the Group Theatre produced which tells about doctors and internes, hospitals and death, love and work. I know that I know as little about surgery and medicine as the next man, but you will find that. that doesn’t matter. Here, also, the play’s the thing; in fact, the play is so much the thing that again and again you find yourself forgetting it is a play and imagining that you’re eavesdropping on the private conversations of surgeons and internes, nurses and patients; actually spying upon the internal workings of a modern institution of healing.

The essential point the play makes is that, being a doctor and learning to become a doctor is a full-time job, a full-time job which militates against everything else, including love and personal ambition. During the early months of the run of the play, when doctors all over town were flocking to see it, that point was made from both sides of the footlights, with perhaps a little less dramatic emphasis from the spectators’ side. For these duty-bound doctors could not pass beyond the entrance of the theatre without leaving their seat numbers at the box office, in the event of an urgent call tracking them down even at their evening’s recreation. I suppose the first physicians’ code anticipated that emergency, and the early physicians were not allowed to enjoy the dramas of Aeschylus or Sophocles or the comedies of Aristophanes without leaving their ticket numbers with one of the amphitheatre gate keepers.

NO LUNCH IN PEACE

At the luncheon to Einstein which was given on the occasion of the Bulletin becoming a full-fledged daily, I observed a waiter approach our table, while we were still in the middle of our fourth course, mumble something to a fellow-guest who, thereupon, arose and left the table, never to return. He was a physician without a private life. Once upon a time we had occasion to call a physician in the evening, somewhere around ten o’clock. We did not learn until later that at the time of our call he was scraping the second fiddle part in a quartet of Mozart. Our call disturbed not only his pleasure but that of his three co-players who played quartets no more that night.

The physician’s lack of a private life, or, rather, the inadvisability of a physician’s private life, was brought home to me one evening in a manner extremely direct and personal. I had of course heard, (or shall I say overheard?) physicians’ wives complaining of husbands having to leave fairly warm beds at three or four in the morning because a patient had a bellyache, and I wondered why Jewish mothers thought physicians were such great catches, But all this was hearsay compared to this personal experience, a trivial experience, but still my own.

It was during the theatre season several years ago when the Max Reinhardt troupe was giving that marvelous repertoire which included the German version of “Everyman” and “Danton’s Death.” I had seen “Danton’s Death” and wished to see it again. I could have paid for tickets to the second performance, but I had become accustomed to receiving passes to the best plays and I did not wish to break my record. I had already seen the play under my own name and an acquaintance volunteered, without any suggestion on my part, to obtain for me tickets under another name, that of a famous–I use the word advisedly–physician who was at that time visiting New York. The volunteering friend knew that this physician was in New York and that he was spending that evening elsewhere than at the Century Theatre, where the Reinhardt troupe was performing. Perhaps I would have been less unwilling to consent to this devious procedure had I realized that at some future date it would supply me with matter for several paragraphs, but in any event I consented.

“DR. FINKELSTEIN”

I walked up jauntily to the box office: “Tickets in the name of Dr. Finkelstein, please.” (Let’s call him Finkelstein.) The tickets were handed to me and then a Negro attendant, turning obsequiously toward me, said–and I don’t think he could have been more humble had he known that I was, verily, the Harry Salpeter: “Won’t you leave your seat number, Dr. Finkelstein; in case there’s a call?”

I beg you to believe me when I say that for a second and a half, or maybe two seconds and a half, my heart was in my mouth. I recovered my self-possession sufficiently to reply: “No, I don’t think there’ll be any call. Don’t bother.” But I moved into the pit with a little sense of shame at the deception I had practiced and my enjoyment of that matchless performance was spoiled a little by the fear that perhaps some one would choose this evening of all evenings to go into a faint, on or off the stage, and that, no real physician being present in the audience, there might be a call for “Dr. Finkelstein.” But that litle query of the attendant’s made me aware of the violability of the physician’s leisure. Not that I expect you to weep about the fate of the physician–not for that reason, certainly, and not in these days, when physicians are worried not by the invasion of their leisure, but by the fact that even their working hours are not as frequently intruded upon by paying clients as they might be.

That evening at the Century Theatre was the only occasion upon which I called myself “Doctor” and if that is an offensive act I believe I am saved by the statute of limitations. But there have been many times when others have called me Doctor, and I have been unable to do anything about it. Again and again, my ears have been assailed by “O. K., Doc.,” or “Yes, Doc.,” or “Hello, Doc.” Those guilty of this offense include mainly cigar store clerks, elevator operators, Jewish waiters, street cleaners, panhandlers and others, I am not particularly proud of the salutation, for it is made in much the same spirit which compels people to call a long-haired musician “Professor.” I am not a doctor, although I must have some of the conventional earmarks. The other evening, as I was on my way to see “Men in White,” I had to use a street car to escape the lightning and the thunder and the rain. As I passed to an empty seat a young woman who was having a smoke in the car against all rules and was feeling particularly perky said through the side of her mouth: “Hello, Doc!” I say she was feeling particularly perky but I must say she didn’t look particularly pretty. Besides, I don’t like girls who smoke–in street cars.