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The Seaforth News, 1961-02-23, Page 6President Chooses A Lady Doctor Though the doors of New 'l fork Hospital one spring day in 1955 hobbled a desperate young man on crutches, After two years of intense pain, during which he lead undergone two critical spin- al operations and had spent months lying flat on his back, he now sought the help of a gray- ing and gracious woman doctor with a reputation for relieving pain. With sure gentleness; in her large, gnarled hands, the doctor first found back muscles knotted in spasm. Next she injected Novocain directly into the af- flicted muscles to permit the blood to flow freely — a proce- dure she had pioneered eight years earlier. Within seconds the pain had subsided. The intensive treatment was continued for a few months, and the doctor added a quarter -inch lift to the patient's shoe to offset a slightly longer right leg. Soon, he was walking without pain or crutches. Six years later, the devoted and grateful patient, John F. Kennedy, appointed the doctor, Janet G. Travail, to be personal physician to the President, the first woman to be so honored, In making the appointment, the President said: "She is a genius terrific, the best I've ever seen." The meticulous Dr. Travell, who refers to herself as a "hy- brid, a cross between an internist and an orthopedist with a special interest in pain," has spent 35 years in teaching and research at New York Hospital, She has also treated privately many wealthy and famous patients in- cluding five members of the Kennedy family and Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater. Her appointment came about. almost casually. "I had been traveling with the President more or less, since Election Day, I made that round-trip flight with him to Florida the night the baby was born. Right after the election he said to me: "1 don't want to change my doctor now. How about coming to the White House?' So I said I would I find it easy to make de- cisions. This is part of my temperament. I still don't know what I'll be paid. They'll get around to letting me know.'' Her new duties will put an end to her weekly tennis matches with her investment -counselor husband, John Powell, in subur- ban Pelham, N.Y„ where they live. The job will also curtail their long summer weekends at the family homestead, a 1770 farmhouse in the rolling hills of western Massachusetts, where they rids horseback and swim in the local quarry. Evenings at the opera and theatre ("We prefer strong drama"), and small, inti- mate dinners for friends in the arts and politics, will be fewer, "The President likes to have me around , . . I think a doctor should be with him wherever he goes, not because of his health, which is excellent, but because of possible accidents," she explained. "I hope to see .him every day, at least to say hello." For that, she will have a White House car, with a radio, always reachable by the Presi- dent. Born and reared in New York City. Dr. Travell was known as a tomboy at fashionable Brearley School. At Wellesley, she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa her junior year, and won the tennis championship three years run- ning. In addition to rearing two daughters, the indefatigable Dr. Travels has clattered across ice fields in a dog sled near Canada's Hudson Bay to learn about cold; driven a tractor to learn what "GENIUS" — That's President Kennedy's definition of his newly appointed White House physician, Dr. Janet G. Travell, of New York City, She is the first woman ever to hold the post and the first civilian in that capacity since the Harding administration. She succeeds former President Eisenhower's White House doctor, Maj. Gen• Howard McC. Snyder. happens to a farmer's sacroiliac, and helped design seats for jet airliners. Of chairs, she once wrote: "You wouldn't dream of buying shoes that don't fit, You wouldn't sleep in a bed that is too short. But have you ever stopped to con•• Sider whether the chairs you sit in are right for you? Chairs are a personal thing." And the President's chair is no exception. His brown leather: chair in the White House will get a thorough going-over from his medical benefactress. If it doesn't fit him, she may even have a new one designed. From NEWS - WEEK. ____._.. World's Best Optical Illusion You look and look, and still you can't believe your eyes, at the Magnetic Hill in New Bruns- wick. For it seems as if the law about gravity is topsy-turvy. At the top of the hill a sign instructs motorists to drive to a white post, then turn off the engine and keep brakes off. Then comes the shock. For the car will start to run backwards, gathering speed as it goes up- hill. To add to the bewilderment, the water in the ditch by the side of the road flows uphill too. Many tourists try to make their cars coast down the hill as they obviously should. But without success. Then, inevitably they get out of the cars and lie flat on the road, trying to get the true level by "looking Indian." Still the road goes down while the water flows up. Many sceptics have walked down the hill. But when they get near the bottom, their feet have been dragging and their breath coming in puffs. Coming up, though, is easy. Their legs know, their cars know, but their eyes cannot see that down is up and up is down, New Brunswick's Magnetic Hill, the world's perfect optical illu- sion, defies all logic. It's an age when many labour- saving devices enable a person to have more time for sitting down and watching the strenu- ous activities of others on the television screen. MID SPACE CHIMP — Enos, a 31.pound chimpanzee, strikes a strong man pose at Holloman Air Porte Base, The chimp is training fo.- Kowa rocket flights. BE NEAT; BE CLEAN — The machines are moving in on the litterbug. With many places passing litter laws, the rubbish disposer has joined the radio, record-player and what have you on the dashboard. Place facial tissues or sandwich rinds in the drawer of this device on the '67 Mercury and vacuum sucks them into the glass jar. Mystery Of The Musk's Lost Scent • People born at the beginning of this century may possibly remember the flowerpots of' musk, which, along with gerani- umsand fucssias, filled almost every cottage window through- out Britain. Musk was a.special favorite, not because of its small yellow flowers that resemble the wild mimulus and the garden antirrhinum, but because of its indescribably sweet scent.. Cot- tagers grew it for its scent alone, training the slender branches on tiny toy -like ladders, narrow at the bottom and wide at the top. For children there was a kind ,of enchantment about those little ladders, 'and they watched the progress of the musk far more eagerly than they did the bright geraniums and the fuchsias pressed against the muslin -cur- tained windows. Children often bought a tiny pot of musk for a grownup's present—at two -pence it was ex- cellent value — for even the smallest, plant diffused the same penetrating perfume as the large one. It is always difficult for anyone to describe any partic- ular scent;' musk seems to have suggested a mixture of lemon and almond, and the scent came from the leaves, not from the primrose -yellow flowers. Then, one day, the musk sud• - denly lost its scent. It happened in the middle of World War I when such a happening might well have been crowded out of public notice by the grave news • from the battlefields in France. But the sudden and mysterious loss of scent from the musk made newspaper headlines one • day in the year 1915. How had it happened? What was the reason? Everyone left with a scentless musk asked each other these questions, but no- body could give an •explanation. It was almost impossible, people thought, that every plant, in the part of country,.should suddenly have lost the scent that made the musk such a favorite, Naturalists took time to inves- tigate the happening. Horticul- turists in Britain and in other countries tried to account for it. But none of them appeared very definite about the explanation of what had taken place. When the experts finally de- cided to print their solution of the mystery,, most flower -lovers found it extremely unconvincing and disappointing. The 'scientific explanation was that the original musk, growing wild in South America, and introduced to this country at the end of •the 18th century, had gradually lost its. originaly sweet scent, though no- body seems to have been aware of it. It often happenslike that with other plants when they are cultivated and cosseted, instead of having to use their own pow- ers to attract insects by their color or their perfume. People who grew it had looked after the musk too well, and so it had im- perceptibly lost its attractive scent. "Flowers," wrote Geof- frey Grisson, "have never been allowed to become quite so sen- timentally, dangerously power- ful , .. as birds and clogs," Nevertheless, there were few who were impressed with the scientific explanation about the favorite musk, for it was shorn of romance, and most flower - lovers are romantic as well as maginative. So, for years after, the rumor persisted that in some remote and nameless hamlet here were musks that continued to smell as sweetly as did the original plants, The names of those places were never dis- closed; they existed only in the imaginative minds of those Who efused to believe, that musk had ]oat its scent for always, writes Marion Henderson In the Chris - Jan Science Monitor. And so you will find people today who still hope to come by a musk fragrance. I remember hearing the 'late Eleanor Sin- clair'Rhode-the famous writer of flowers and herbs—tell this story. When a girl of ten she spent a holiday in the Highlands with her parents. Her host had a beautiful garden and the sweet -scented musk grew in the greenhouse along with many more flowering plants. One day , the little girl met the old gar-. dener watering his glasshouse treasures. "Smell that plant," he said to Eleanor. "Smell it and try to remember the scent. For the musk will soon lose its perfume and that will never come back until we are rid of the fear of war. When the world learns to live in peace, the musk will re- cover its scent." That .phophecy stays unfulfill- ed, and up and down Britain the musks are scentless, ' A few years ago, while passing through Keswick, I took a by- road for the sake of visiting a wayside garden close to the vil- lage of, Pooly-bridge, I stooped to exaxmine the wide glades of stone covered over with a thick mat of green leaves interwoven with small yellow flowers. The leaves were green as emerald since a burn flowed under the paving stones. And I admired the clumps of forget -me -nota and pansies that spread almost on to the road. It was while I was picking a few of the green leaves from the musk that the door of a cottage opened on the opposite side of the road. "There's no scent in the musk," said the old woman who stood in the doorway. "Once, I remember how nearly every cyclist stopped here to smell the wild garden; now the cars fly past, leaving only the fumes of petrol behind." The thing is to keep one's nose clear and appraising, despite the fumes from modern traffic. Then we shall be able to trace the first faint recurrence of the long lost scent of the musk. Perhaps, even, we may chance on a plant hidden away in some remote corner and still endowed with its original fragrance. Fastest Woman In . The World The fastest woman . in the world would rather sleep than run. "I'll sleep any time," said Olympic sprint champion Wilma Rudolph one day lost month, after setting a woman's indoor record (8.9 seconds) for the 60 - yard dash. "Any time I can catch a nap — even for a few minutes — •I will." When 'she isn't sleeping, Miss Rudolph is running — su grace- fully and swiftly that, following her Olympic triumphs, she has become the most popular Ameri- can female athlete since the late Babe. Didrikson. Her appeal is twofold: Unlike most American female sprinters, she wins; and, unlike many American female athletes, she looks feminine, This week, at New York's Madison Square Garden, she is favored to win the first women's event in the Millrose Games in 29 years, At the Olympics, Wilma spent most of her spare time with Ray Norton, the U.S. sprinter whose failure to win either the 100- or 200 -meter dashes shocked track experts. Since the genies, the, world's fastest woman and the World's fastest man have been linked romantically, but when the subject came up once more, the link snapped. "Ray's mar- ried," said Wilma, quietly, only a few days after learning of Nor- ton's recent marriage to a Uni- versity of California senior. "VIOre still very good friends." • ' ;TABLE TALKS • 1•tere's soup that m * grand stafater for- a cold-weatheakesr dinner or luncheon. It isn't hard to prepare and will probably be- come a real favorite with your fam.. ,S'OUIcilyCREAM POTATO SO UP 2 cups t cup chopped poceleryatoes '= 1 small onion, sliced 1t cu'water 1 chpsicken bouillon cube 2 cups sour cream with chives Salt and pepper to taste Minced, parsley (if desired). Combine potatoes, c e l e r y, water, and onion- and cook to- gether 20 minutes. Add, bouillon cube and sour cream with chives. Simmer for approximately 5 minutes longer, but: do not boil. - Season with salt and pepper. Gar- nish with parsley. Serves six, * * * Recipes requested for chess pie poured into The' Christian Science Monitor from every- where and they differed so wide- ly that the cookery editor tried to select two types, one using a little corn meal and another us- ing just four ingredients, Some of these recipes call for vanilla and some for lemon juice for flavoring. Many suggest a sprinkle of nutmeg over the top, Mrs. R, T, Davidson, writes "Be- ing a chess pie enthusiast, I wel- comed the opportunity to share with readers some of my chess pie recipes. This one is used, by members of my family and is probably the most popular one. Most cooks think chess pie should contain only these 4 in- gredients. CHESS PIE (1) 1 unbaked pie shell 1 cup sugar 4 cup butter 1 teaspoon vanilla 3 eggs Cream sugar and butter to- gether until smooth. Break eggs and beat in one at a time ana pour into unbaked pie shell, Bake in moderate oven (350° F.)' for about 80 minutes. Mrs. Davidson adds the fol- lowing pointer about chess pies: "Sometimes in baking, the but- ter will separate from the other ingredients. I have been told the following step will eliminate this—place a tablespoon in the unbaked pie shell and' pour the filling over the spoon. Remove spoon and bake as usual." * a * Mrs. Mary Wall, writes, "I have several chess pie recipes and all use corn meal. This recipe is from an old Virginia family cookbook over 100 years old. It was twrite in our 'sang list of delicious pies," ()loss PIE (z) 2 caps sugar '/a c sp sweet cre1411 Rem 1 cup butter r eggs, beaten 1 teaspoon corn meat Vanilla to taste 1 unbaked pie shell Cream sugar and . butter to- gether. Add eggs, well beaten, and all other ingredients: Beat until mixture is very light. The more beating, the better the pie. ("This refers to beating by hand," says Mrs. Wall, "as I do not 'know how ' it would work with an electric beater,.,.,)- Pour into flaky, uncooked pie shell and bake at 350-375° F. for 30 min- utes, ,, ,, 4, Before the winter is over, you may want to make a suet pud- ding. One was sent to the col- umn from Canada. "I should like you to have this eggless suet pudding recipe. We, and many others, enjoy it and I feel sure readers would also," writes Betty E. Fillmore. SUET PIIDnurNG 1 cup flour 1 cup sugar 1 cup raisins 1 cup suet, finely cat 1 cup bread crumbs la teaspoon each, salt and cinnamon 1 cup sweet milk 1 teaspoon soda Combine all ingredients and mix well; pour into greased. bowl, Cover with aluminum toil or waxed paper. Steam 3 hours. - Serve with white or brown sauce. Serves 0. This pudding keeps well and can be reheated. * * * "I thought you might wish to try the old-world hot biscuits which always bring favorable re- marks from my friends, These are made with smoked bacon ends. These meaty, inexpensive delicacies 'end both flavor and substance," writes Mrs. Char- lotte Miller. BACON BISCUITS 1 cup bacon ends, cut In 114 - inch squares 2i/2 ur 2 teaspoonscupsflobaking powder 14 teaspoon soda 1 teaspoon salt Dash black pepper (optional) 1 cup sweet milk or buttermilk White of egg Fry bacon to golden brown. Sift together the dry ingredients. Add milk and bacon. Mix all. ingredients together for one min- ute, Pat down on floured board to s/a-inch thick. Cut into small biscuits; brush with egg white. Bake 12 minutes at 450°F. ISSUE 7 — 1961 Scouts, Science and Snow --- Two Explorer Scouts, select- ed by Boy Scouts officials, are spending the six-month arctic Winter at Camp Cen- tury on the Greenland ice- , cap, In picture at left, Soren Gregorsen of Denmark, right, and Kent Goering, centre, of Neodesha, Kan„ watch M/Sgt. John G. Buteau at the control panel of the nu- clear reactor at Camp Cen- tury. The camp is, a little, self-contained city under the snow. Tunnels 80 feet deep were dug to house the re• anter, top picture, Which generates electricity for the isolated research base. -