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Hospital Experiences
Editor:
As I am a freshman this year, perhaps I am not yet fully acclimated to the University. However, my confidence that I am correct in saying that Watkins Memorial Hospital is one of the biggest fares on this campus is assured more every day as I talk to others who have been patients at the hospital.
I should like to relate my own experiences here shortly. I was scrimmaging on the intramural field with some fellows from my fraternity house in preparation for a game and accidentally received a very hard block which did something (I still don't know what) to my right arm. I could not move it and the soreness extended clear down the arm.
SOME OF the fellows brought me to Watkins where I was promptly told to sit down and wait. Approximately 30 minutes later I was told the doctor would see me. "Got this playing football, didn't you," the doctor asked with dismay. "Darned kids never learn, do you." Thereupon he proceeded to dig his thumb deep into the very sorst part of my arm—to my painful surprise.
He next grabbed my wrist and my elbow, swung my arm up and held it momentarily at shoulder length, and then shook it. Everything happened so fast and the pain was so great that by the time I had my breath he had let the arm flop back down at my side.
"GOT NO SYMPATHY for kids like you. Serves you right," he said. He then directed me to a nurse who was to put the arm in a sling. After a quick search, she found she had no slings. Indeed, there was no sling to be found in the hospital. And so she tore up a sheet and improvised.
I left the hospital in considerably more pain than when I had come and a vow never to return.
I, of course, thought that such an experience was an isolated case until I talked with another person. He related to me how, after he had accidently plunged his arm through a door of Summerfield Hall, he was rushed up to Watkins with a bleeding arm. After some waiting (the arm was still bleeding) a doctor finally came, washed out the wound, and sewed it up.
But it seems the sewing job was not too well done, as it began bleeding during the night. The sewing had become loosened. So back up to the hospital he went where they placed another bandage on the wound and sewed it up again. A week later, feeling a lump and a spot of blood under his arm, he reached beneath his shirt and extracted a piece of glass $1 \frac{1}{2}$ inches long, a half-inch wide, and a quarter-inch thick.
I SHOULD seriously suggest that we think about setting up a well-staffed veterinary hospital here, replacing the outdated Watkins. Perhaps this can be more suitable to the causes of health.
And perhaps it would help if others (and there surely are more) who have received similar treatment at the hospital would write similar letters.
But this injustice must be corrected immediately.
Rick Solum
Prairie Village freshman
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Disgusted by Article
Laughter was my first reaction to the item "Crisis Spreads Strange Hush in Local Tavern," in the Oct. 24 Daily Kansan. Laughter was followed shortly by disgust. How could such melodramatic garbage have found its way into the Daily Kansan? The article made a mockery of the seriousness of the present Cuban situation.
This is all I have to say, but it had to be said.
Thursday, Nov. 1, 1962 University Daily Kansan
Martha Stout
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Abortion Debate Continues Editor:
I find it difficult to understand how someone of Mr. Franklin Shobe's ability could argue so poorly. I am, of course, referring to Mr. Shobe's reply to Mr. Larry Page's condemnation of legalized abortion. Since I am not entirely sympathetic with Mr. Page's position with respect to the issue, I do not pretend to be defending him. I do intend, however, to criticize Mr. Shobe's argumentation on several points.
... Letters ...
FIRST OF ALL. Mr. Shobe may be correct in his content that the
human being is a "unified (integrated) organism which decomposes in its entirety soon after death" — although I am not at all sure I understand what is being asserted. Although this remark needs considerable clarification, to say that this assertion is the theologically sound and orthodox Christian view seems to me to be absurd. In what sense the view is "theologically sound," as Mr. Shobe puts it, I am not sure. However, I am not strictly a theologian, and so I shall leave Mr. Shobe to his theology.
Mr. Shobe may, of course, have some odd notion of orthodoxy in mind. Consequently, I may have missed his point. Nevertheless, it is encumbent on him to clarify his meaning of words if he wishes to use them in peculiar ways. I prefer to pass on to Mr. Shobe's interesting use of logic. Mr. Shobe was interested in defending the proposition that the soul does not exist. To prove this proposition, Mr. Shobe cited the orthodox and theologically sound Christian doctrine; at least he claims as much.
On the other hand, Mr. Shobe's belief does not seem to be an "orthodox" Christian view in any ordinary sense of the word. Indeed, his belief seems to be highly unorthodox if he is putting it forth as a Christian view. For, during at least sixteen centuries, the Christian believed that he could be saved and that despite his manifold sins he might lead a life everlasting. I do not want to refine this viewpoint — I only present a doctrine more deserving of the term "orthodox."
HE CONTINUES his argument in a curious way. The soul, he urges, cannot give existence to the fetus. For if it did, then the fetus could not exist. But the fetus does exist. Therefore, by the counterpositive, the soul cannot give existence to the fetus.
The structure of the argument given in Lukasiewicz's notation is Cpq, CNQNp, Nq, Np, which Mr. Shobe will recognize. This argument is clearly valid, provided p=the soul gives existence to the fetus and q=the fetus does not exist. There is nothing especially enlightening in the conclusion, for the question was begged. If Mr. Shobe is interested in establishing the moral equivalence of an appendectomy and an abortion, he will have to produce an argument with more persuasive power than one which is a mere tautology, where his conclusion is explicitly assumed.
Paul Schaich Topeka senior
The Daily Kansan, in recent weeks, has published a number of lengthy letters. Our policy was stated in the first issue this semester: we will not cut letters we receive, and we do not place a word limit on letters because we do not want to discourage opinion in any manner.
However, contributors should keep two factors in mind when composing letters. First, shorter letters are more likely to be printed soon after they are received. Long letters often must be held until enough space is available on the editorial page.
The Daily Kansan will not place a limit on letters. However, writers are urged to make sure everything they say is pertinent to the issue and is said in the least possible space.
Second, shorter letters are more likely to be read. A long letter will discourage many readers from starting the letter in the first place, and shorter letters are more likely to be read in their entirety.
—The Editors
Dixiecrats Attempt To Discredit Kennedy
Now that the Dixiecrat element has been so soundly upbraided and denounced in the University of Mississippi controversy, some of its apologies are attempting to discredit the national administration by claiming that Kennedy, Kennedy & Company were unfair to Dixie in their reaction to the recent disturbances at Albany, Ga.
THESE APOLOGISTS purport to believe that since the national government used force to quell the disturbances at "Ole Miss," it should have used force also to quell "disturbances" allegedly created by a group of Negroes who held prayer meetings on the courthouse lawn at Albany.
- The laws allegedly violated by them are laws against "parading in public," hastily revised ordinances of questionable vintage.
- In order to see this claim in its true character, let us consider the following facts:
- Those people carried no weapons, spoke to no one except the police and made no hostile movements of any kind.
- Since these ordinances were local and not national, the United States government was not involved. Law enforcement is the responsibility of whatever political entity creates the transgressed
- The so-called "disturbances" at Albany were peaceful gatherings of dedicated pacifists who assembled to hold prayer meetings in public view, soliciting divine aid in the solving of their problems.
law, and since no threat to national authority existed, the federal government could have intervened only at the invitation of legally constituted local authority.
- The reason for these prayer demonstrations is that these Negroes had despaired of getting relief from local authorities. They were tired of being penalized because their skin is dark, and they wanted the rights guaranteed to them by the Constitution but forcibly withheld from them by the state of Georgia and the city of Albany.
In many ways, those people were seeking the same things George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Nathan Hale, John Hancock and others sought in 1776. Among other grievances — some of which are mentioned in the Declaration of Independence — these Georgia citizens were compelled to pay taxes while being systematically excluded from the franchise.
"THIS IS THE same "taxation without representation" that was one of the principal causes of the Revolutionary War, and it seems that the disfranchised Negroes in Georgia agree with Franklin, Jefferson and other Founding Fathers that "taxation without representation is tyranny."
It is deplorable that such protests are still necessary almost 200 years after the rights of man were so eloquently stated in a cornerstone of our political philosophy.
— Jim Alsbrook