1955-06-04 — Page 13

HYPOCHONDRIACS ON EVERY SIDE

By LESLEY BLANCH

Into

soma

New York.

a mental hospital ITH the co-operation time during their lives."

It is said that in New York

HOW

persons.

of a goggled-eyed there is one doctor to every 200 public. suger to be guinea-pigs, medicine occupies a dominant place in contemporary American life.

and

It is surrounded by an aure of superstition, magic, mumbo-jumbo similar to that with which more primitive races approach their religious rituals. The doctor's pronounce- ments are law, his prescriptions holy writ. "I am to be hos pitalised," the American citizen says, reverently. Or, in a hush cd aside, following an introdus tion, perhaps: "He has just had Surgery,"

On all sides, in every walk of life. there is #a constant awareness of disease. Moreover, the average citizen now goes to the doctor who well. Check up are a regular recu'ine.

Public interest. in all things "medical is reflected In many ways Quack-cures are labelled hospital tested." Advertise. ments show dramatic operating theatre teams, whitecladi

and

fense proffering antacids. pear substitutes it is inferred, for the kni forceps, unt clamp.

7

Men in white exercise almost mystic attraction. Cush-

famous inx in on this. department store collected huge crowd by the simple expédi ent of dressing a high-powered salcaman in surgeon's white overalls, gauze mask and rubber gloves. He was promoting new brand of corn-cute.

EXPLOITATION

D

exploit

Toy manufacturers current trends with dolls "dress- ed as nurses or surgeons, and with all the miniature stretch- ers, splints. and stethoscopes a young hypochondrine tiesire

wist

could

Christmas, delighted

children were able merry

with

to make

a comprehensive dentist's kit which included

model instruments

and several

to stop

Their offices are mostly at street level, their name-plates and qualifications A constant reminder that in the midst of

life we are in death..

Imagine the effect of this on foreigners, invited to a party. let us

on the 27 floor. us say They must first run the gauntlet They of all the professional name-

1 plates in the entrance hall. Doctors, dentists. masseuses, electro-therapists X-ray speel- alists, chiropodists.

They aster

ascend in 1 lift along with several preoccupied-looking patients, past fler after four either reveal a whisk of nurse cap and apron, or leave an unmistakable whiff of ether to combat the pertures of the other party-goers.

Cate

To Europeans, all this is very But dampening to the morale. to the Americans it is infnitely reassuring.

They have repanded to trent- they го nicely con- ment:

ditioned. If it is true that newhere are there finer peters where are there finer patients.

either?

667

A

THE CHINA MAIL, SATURDAY, JUNE 4, 1955.

TORY DEPARTMENT OF LABOUR RELATIONS

00:0

An unofficial Strike every 20 minutes!

GUARANTEED

Wages

Prices

CERTAINLY A JOLLY SWITCHBACK – IF YOU LIKE SWITCHBACKS

World Copyright by arrangement with the Manchester 'Guardian

By Sir BEVERLEY BAXTER, MP

DIVIDED BERLIN

YEARS AFTER

TEN YEARS

are not

to

of

O smoking. Ad-.. However, West Berlin, as Goering were not out-done his other hand holds a child that? The Berliners

on his shoulder. Beneath his even amused. just safety the name indicates, is only by them.

Meantime the tragi-comedy is feet is a broken swastika. At. belts." The part of the city. What about

But now comes the odd the entrance to the memorial played by day and by night. familiar sign in East Berlín technically

im- went cn Sunday night the BEA plane warned us known as the Russian Sec- thing about our visit to the garden there are two sets of plastic dentures

wonderful performance Remember Russian Sector. How could we peep

mense marble flags that as well as a drill that we were approaching tor? or extract.

Parsifal, opera which is whien buzzed with appalling Berlin. And thus we came behind the Iron Curtain that it was a Sunday, that touch the ground in salute such religious significance to the realism..

Concert broadcasts are likely down in a cold, bad-tempered That apparently would be the weather was warm, and to the dead. On each is the Germans that no applause to be interspersed with warn- spring day.

quite simple you buy a that the East Berliners had face of Stalin and also the, alowed at any point in the per- ings of diseases End

The last time I had been ticket on the underground pretty much nowhere else to hammer and sickle. symptoms. An intimate voice precedes the Dance of the Sugar in Berlin was in the autumn and you get out at a station go. Then how many people our of 1945 when the streets in the Russian Sector. It is were visible in the whole tongues are guire if

were hardly more than paths no more trouble than that, sweep of the Unter den

Plum Fairy

PROPAGANDA

ALL-CLEAR

is

formance, not even, as the end.

can

And I went to a dubbed ver sion of Marlon Brando in "The Wild One" the film about hood- lums who terrorised an Ameri- Linden? As far as I could"

small town, "Don't delay, folks, don't de-cut through the massive

which was lay! That billous headache's on heaps of rubble. Berlin, at

gee, there were eighteen On either side of the memorial banned in Britain, There I heard the its way." croons a lyric tenor.

Russian soldiers in uniform park as we move towards the such ironic laughter from A yodelling soprano counters that time, seemed as dead as

talking listlessly to each top of the rise, there are white Berliners as would have pene-

marble with

murals extolling the trated the outer skin of the message of hope: The the megalomaniac who had

But not before you are other, and there were five Russian people 2$ pay killed himself in his hide- simple way for little

workers, toughest Hollywood director. grief--can stomach's your

get

subjected to propaganda! In assorted civilians. I find it saints, heroes and Communists. out called The Bunker.

I must inform you that Her- relict.

But now! No... That each of the minor under- hard to explain but the The murals on the left are ex-

actly the same as those on All this is fine for your drug-

the bert Morrison arrived in Ber right, duplicates in fact, but one lin, while I was there, to Jec- gist: but what about Doc? The is not a transformation ground stations, once you ultimate effect was that we

set has Russian captions and ture a Society on "The Duties public must not get the idea scene, from a pantomime. are out of West Berlin, there were in a city of ghosts.

of an Opposition." they can physic themselves.

Another voice takes up

the Certainly Berlin has mace a are signs: "Down with the But now let us visit the the other has German.

can be tale. "If that headache's not sturdy attempt to rebuild Paris Agreement! Russia Stalinalle, which

translated as Stalin Avenue, zone in an hour," it hisses, "go its body and perhaps its soul, only wants Peace."

very midst of the wretched, unpainted and un-

to

your doctor at once. Delay but it is still a

mutilated Emerging at a quiet East In the

might have grave consequences.

In response to the public's city, a city partitioned into Berlin station we found yearning

or old doctor that.

DR GALAHAD

י.

we

mnust

ask:

the

tha

as

ODILE, ALEC and

PARIS

with

JOHN and MARSHA

IN COLOUR

IMPOSSIBLE? NOT A BIT!

E.LEITZ WITELAR

ook to the

eader

Leica

CAMERA

Leica

M3

IMPROVED

Leics 111 F

NEW

ON SALE AT LEADING PHOTO DEALERS

Sole Distributors: UNIVERSAL MERCANTILE CO., LTD.

TEL: 22502

14 QUEEN'S ROAD, C.

The Versatile Beanstalk

The whole thing is magni- As if the Berliners need any ficently done as far as the instruction on that subject! craftsmen and the architecture are concerned. Nor is it lacking In emotional appeal, for Stalin the bodies of 7,000 in for the mystic figure two rumps, a city that is solitary taxi cab and dicker- repaired houses of East brought of Doc." there are numbers of neither a world capital nor ed with the driver. He ex- Berlin there is an avenue of Russian soldiers to be burleri radio, fim, and TV programmes

But again one plained in understandable such elegance that it almost the soil of the memorial park.. centred round young doctor this a provincial town.

We put up at a brand new German that he could 'drive challenges the upper reaches "what does Russia achieve by Avenue in New this?" On that lovely Sunday there were not more than hutel, spotlessly clean, in us anywhere in the Sector of Fifth

twenty people in the memorial the avenue known as Kur- but could not take us back York.

What he to West Berlin.

the is one of Except for Dr Jekyll and Mr

It is as wide as the park yet it furstendamm. The "shop

he Hyde, Hollywood seldom port-

Champs Elysees. All of a sights of the world. Nor is the

park any distance from rays the doctor as other than a windows were bravely lit really meant was that

could not take the cab to reliable Galahad figure a com- but they could not make West Berlin. The Russians cent blocks of flats faced. shrewd as he was dynamic he

pattern" there are magnifi city. If Stalin had been pound of virility and stability much impression upon the

beautiful if. young; of understanding and encircling gloom of a night are realists!

with a white shiny finish would, instead of the

young Russian soldier, have had protection if old: omnipresent

Naturally they would not that is washable. What is two mothers, a German and a and reassuring, symbol of the that might have been in

profound craving for November. But the shops assume, that any German more they are all heated Russian, weeping for their dead Contemporary fiction refects were full of pretty things to would prefer the West Sec. from one source a large sons We have only to visualise mystique of medicine, of entice the Fraus and Frau- tor to the East, but he might heating plant some distance to feel the emotional impact. The German is not good pro- the clinical figure, and dramas leins, for the female of the sell his taxi to the wicked away. The achievement of of hushed operating theatres are species bedecks herself even capitalists.

such an avenue is a tremen- paganda fodder these days. He and a stomach full from Hitler In turn, the authorities dous thing but who occu- and he is not going to swallow into pies the flats? Eighty-five the Stalln legend or any other allow anyone to come the West Zone but unless he percent of the tenants are not yet. And when the East

Stalin

alin as the male counterpart has a work permit he has party officials. The remain- Berliners are asked to gaze on awarded to of Joan of Arc, they are apt to

nation

this

a favourite theme.

in Berlin.

The nation's No. 1 best-seller,

Morton Thompson's "Not As A

Stranger." tells of a doctor'IMPRESSIONS professional life in 900 pages of factual detail.

bering over their own allments. Each nationa

discase.

rheumatism.

and

on an

CLIMAX

allotment remember that it was deari

who gave Hitler the "all for World War Two when the famous non-aggression pact was sigred by Russia and Germany in 1939.

abead

moment

sbe

No one knows what fate les

for

the Berlin. At

ia like а кера

Admitted, most people are First impressions have to go back when his visit is ing flats are

has its particular their value. On that walk I over. Thus do the rules workers The French discuss did not see one policeman, emerge to cover the strange basis. their liver, the English their nor any street walkers such game of East-West.

But nowhere, as abound in London's West But we had not been in fancy.. is there such a pre-

the Eod. Berlin, under the Nazis, the Russian Sector for more accupation with surgery,

Just to teach the East post-operative techni- was the most evil city in than a few minutes on this newest

such, as the world. No doubt ques, scar-tissues

or Sunday when we began to Berliners to remember their we find among Americans. ganised vice still exists, but feel a curious, almost un benefactors there is on the woman who has to do all the

Gall bladder operations are the latest enthusiasm.

Sir at least it does not flaunt canny feeling. The weather avenue a portable statue of house work for her protectors. Anthony Eden's epse history was itself in the face of visitors. had cleared. The sun was Joe Stalin in an ordinary B in trying to read the middle followed with knowledgeable On Sunday morning we warm and inviting. And it suit of clothes. There is also that the Berliner is about the sympathy and a mixture of went to a Roman Catholic was a holiday. Slowly we a sentry box for a guard to most resourceful, resilient crea- he was brought to the church which, like so many drove up what is left of the keep watch with a loaded ture ever created. In fact he is buildings in this city of famous, Unter den Linden, rifle lest there should be a as distinct as any of the occupy- tragedy, was half old and There on each side is what repetition of the unfortunate half new. There were bullet remains of the glory of the incident, not long ago, when marks on the old walls, for Hohenzollerns, of Bismarck a wicked deviationist push- nothing was spared in the and Frederick the Great. But ed the statue over on its desperate street-to-street on the right there was a back. fighting in the last days of disordered mass which was

Hitler's bunker. the opera, or the current object Berlin's defence.

pride and relief was apparent when States for treatment.

The

TENSION MOUNTS

American craving for

psychiatry is well known.

Citizens hurry off to their analyst with the alacrity other races reserve for visits to cafes,

of their affection; while children The church was so crowd-

are analysed almost before thered that there was hardly. can talk back from the couch.

Nervous

assames room for us to stand." In

tension

alarming proportions, and the deep and reverent silence the...

GHOSTS

of Berlin wise to remember

ing races.

IRONY

now

The Berliner is a great joker But the climax of the and it appeals to his sense of irony that the Allies, having Russian glorlication of dead his city, are themselves and their rulers

money into it so that His is in the remarkable war the city will rise again.

the Allies, memorial erected in one of factories will be as new as bo

morrow, whereas the lovely parks that adorn

factories were not des- whose

to limprovise. facts published concerning the congregation listened to the Chancelleries, offices, minip East Berlin. There is a rising froyed, will have nation's mental heal

health are dis quieting. We learn that there priest's words and then they ture palaces, embassies, the slope in the beautifully kept He cammot are as many people in mental went to their homes in a State Opera. The glory of it park and in the distance, powers withdrawing yet, and he Holtais as in all the other city that had known great still lingers despite the outlined against the sky, is

But the Berliner is proud, He hospitals

combined" "Nine sorrow and is acquainted wreckage. They did them the splendid statue of a raillion Americans are suffering with grief-but waits and selves well; those German young Russian soldier with intends that his city shall be

come pros more the seat from mental disorders** in 12 children will need to go waits for its resur

Emperors, and Hitler and a sword in one hand, while Parliame

Parliament, BONNI Where

see the occupying,

likes their money,

FOR STORES ETC.

Suitable for Display

purposes Dispensaries,

Stores and ...Offices

and Homes for filing,"

general storage etc,

Clean, handy & easily "moved for con-

venience.

PRICED FROM HK$20 TO $145

OFFICES

HOMES

Tlers can be added pr reduced. With or without stands. Also Hanging

Can be seen st

Sole Agents: TRADESHIPS, LIMITED Loke Yew Building, Top Floor; 50, Quean's Road C.

Tels: 31233 30802