"Not to interfere with the practice of resident physicians among students. . .and to exercise no influence either in favor or against any special school of medicine."

In his first year, Dr. George Fitz, the Visitor, saw 660 students. In 1951, the Hygiene Department had 63,839 visits, including over 10,000 from employees. When Stillman opened in 1902 it admitted 223 patients; in only one year since the '20's, aside from the war, have confinements dropped below 1,000.

The tremendous increase cannot entirely be laid to a growing University population, which has only tripled since the late nineteenth century.

Neither does "mass health decline" explain the situation. Says Bock:

"It is not that men of today are less rugged than those of the past. The remarkable change in sociological outlook in the last 25 years has removed many barriers and set up others. . ." In other words, mental health problems now account for a good many of Hygiene's increases visits.

At Your Service

And, of course the majority of Harvard men are no longer self-sufficient easterners with private physicians. The more diverse student's geographic origins became, and the less their average family income, the more was the need for a University sponsored hygiene program.

Psychiatriste were unheard of at the turn of the century, but a year ago the three University psychiatrists saw 597 men in a total of 2,136 visits. Now they are booked solid for three weeks ahead.

Book attributes this to "a social revolution since the first war and the general insecurity and anxiety of the community which has become reflected in the undergraduate. The cold war has added an additional aura of anxiety and the tremendous competitions mixed with the desire for good makes to get into graduate schools have brought on all kinds of phony notions that are tough to dispel."

The number of services Hygiene supplies for the $30 medical and infirmary fee is astounding. The equivalent of 12 full-time dormers, two possible weeks a term at Stillman for every student surgical and psychiatric eliutes are only part of its continuos.

One formerly large activity is now non-extant, however. Since Rock took over in '36 there have been no major operations in Stillman's outmoded operating room. The great teaching hospitals affiliated with the Medical School, Peter Bent Brigham, Mass. General, Both Israel, the Eye and Ear, have taken care of Harvard's needs.

Bock has also worked out a deal with these hospitals where Hygiene partially subsidizes the enormous cost for postoperative care up to two weeks, almost as if the student was at Stillman.

The department maintains a laboratory with a staff of trained technicians. The Law school, Medical and Public Health school, and the Business school now have clinics. Two doctors are on call every evening. A surgical staff at Dillon Field House, supported by the H.A.A., gives over 20,000 treatments to athletes a year, and the three-man dental staff sees over 4,000 cases per annum.

One of the least known, but most important of Hygiene's services has been the sanitary inspection of all the University dining halls, swimming pools, and plumbing. This started in the late '20's when food poisoning was getting to be a common occurrence.

For instance, students no longer eat certain kinds of pies because the sanitation staff found they tended to create gastroenteritis. In '49 a rash of sickness was traced to a contaminated meat cutter. Dining hall employees now get lectures on how to handle food, and a diarrhea epidemic in Andover court was stopped a few years ago when Dr. George Moore found its source in a clogged sewage system.