Document text
Forms to be Filled out for Each Interview
FORM A
Circumstances of Interview
STATE New York
FOLKLORE
4?1;,
NEW YORK
NAIL OF WORKER Clarence Weinstock Saul Levitt
ADDRESS 43 Morton Street
DATE June 20, 1939
SUBJECT Hospital Interview
1. Date and time of interview
2. place of interview
3. Name and address of informant
4. Name and address of i,erson, i any, who
touch with informant.
N.Y. Hospital
577 W. 144th Street
in
5. Nane end addruss 1 rioi, if any, acceL.,-n7inF you
Saul Levitt
6. Dscriptio, r)on, hous, surroundinj, etc.
(Use as many additional sheets as necessary, for any of the forms,
each bearing the oreper heading and the number to which the material
refers.)
FORM C
TEXT OF INTERVIEW (UNEDITED)
FOLKLORE
NEW YORK
STATE New York
NAME OF WORKER Clarence Weinstock Saul Levitt
ADDRESS 43 Morton Street 55? W. 144th Street
DATE June 20, 1959
SUBJECT Hospital Interview SLUGGING A POST
Jesus, I feel lousy about tomorrow. We're going up to the O.R.
to kill a guy. It's gonna be filthy. The poor dope's name is Shittovitch
so we call him Shitty for short. He also defecates in bed. Throws his
faeces around the place, so we also call him Paintslinger. Sometimes he
gets humorous, likes to play around. When he defecates like that he pulls
his pants off and all he's got on is his topshirt, like a sailboat. Mean
While his can is sticking up in the air like a chimney. at the hell
can you do? The man is dying after all. You call out for his nurse
"Hey May, get Shitty back in bed." She's a tough little babe, but she
goes up to him as sweet atipake and asks Shitty what he wants, does he
want to eat or something? He looks at her. "We've got eggs, cereal,
oatmeal prune juice." "I want you," he says. what's 'what a tumor can do.
I'll tell you a funny case. It was a nice calm Sunday until night-
time. All of a sudden I get a telephone call and the switchboard says,
doe, they're sending itp a case up to your ward late tonight and the super
says it's for the perpetual bed. I smelled a rat immediately. I thought,
it's that super and his perpetual beds, tilat little stinker in the main
office, who's always trying to slip psychos into the neuro ward. Having
had five admissions on Saturday I was pretty disgusted and tired and
I was positive he was trying to slip over another psycho on me. The
switchboard sensed something was wrong and said, "But after all, she's
coming in on a perpetual bed. "That's really sweet," I said, I said to
her, "I don't care if it's a bed of gold, I'm not taking this patient
"but they've made all the arrangements," she said. "What the hell do
I care, I'm sure she doesn't belong on my ward," I said. My ciander was
up. Jesus, to make a long story short, you can imagine the mood I was
in.
Then th,brought her in. A sorry looking mess if there ever was
one. Besides I found out she had been in Bellevue and that got me sus-
picious. Bellevue had signed her out. Mind you, Bellevue siings her out
and they're bringing her here. I find out she's been puking her head
off for three weeks. SO I go over her. One thing about a hospital they
go over you from head to foot first thing. But there isn't a god damned
thing wrong with her. She could have come in anytime but they have to
bring her in at midnight. That's something else that drives you crazy
in a hospital. Some families will call an ambulance at four in the
morning because they're ashamed of the neighbors. Any way I was sore.
What the hell were they trying to put over on me anyway? It was the
district physician who had done this, politics about the perpetual
bed y'know. Charity, yeah: The donor sends up all his poor relatives
and the head physician says you've got to take it. The district phy-
sician was a shtunk anyway if there ever was one. So I refuse her.
I've got the right.
But I kne-, what was going to happen. Forrest, that's the night
nurse says "Yo' 1. better take it." Sure enough at half past one my
number goes up. It's the super calling me, no, no, not Slimy Joe but
the assistant super. I don't know haw he got his M.D. You ought to
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see him;long and lean like a pike. *Well, why didn't you take her,
you know it's for the perpetual bed," he says over the phone.
"Now you're trying to put one over on me," I said. "She's
a psychiatric anyway and I'm not taking her."
"Stone," he says to me, "as acting superintendent of this
hospital I'm ordering you to take this case. It's a case of the
perpetual bed."
"You can shove the perpetual bed up your ass,11 I said. "Listen,
doctor," I said, "when you hang up you can snuggle up to your wife. You
can roll over and over in bed. But I've been on the ward all day. And
now I get this case which certainly don't belong in neurological and
isn't an emergency. I think you're a shtunk. I'll take her only if
you'll admit her as an edministraAve case and not as a medical." With
that he hung up. The night telephone operator who has been taking it
all in calls up and says, "Three cheers, you didn't take any crap from
him."
An, Jesus, I'll tell you something. Why did I keep that up?
Didn't I know they were going to let her in? But it gets boring here.
You never have any fun. Boy, I vent to town on that case. I ordered
specials and when Slimy Joe said they didn't have any specials I t old
him that it was a case of the perpetual bed and referred him to that
intelligent assistant of his. He blew up like a lila= balloon but
I got my specials. Then we went to work on her. We did a spinal
tap. She's got some very funny things... a diabetic sugar curve
which she shouldn't have. She had a peculiar habit of closing her
eyes. One day we discover nystagmus. That didn't fit into the
picture. She develop swelling of the eye discs. And we get the
screwiest reports from Bellevue. No evidence of malignancy. Then
all of a sudden I'll be god damned if she didn't die.
Slug a post on that! We wanted that post bad. Now comes the
works. The family. The line they give you. They never want you to
perform the autopsy and we absolutely need them, that's all. "Doctor,"
they say, "he suffered so much, should he suffer mere? Cut me up, but
not him, into tiny little pieces, but don't touch my darling." We have
to gi-ve it to them hard. We tell than they won't get a penny life in-
surance, if we don't find out what was wrong. If that doesn't work
there's the one about the family. May e it's contagious or maybe it's
in the family and do they want sonny to get the same thing? That's
the one that usually works. I hate to do a post but I wanted to do
this one. I just had to find out what it was. It's a terrible thing
to ask permission for a post. I hated to go through with getting the
consent on it. So one of the other boys went down but he couldn't do
a goddamn thing. Fin aly I went down and there was the old lady with
all the relatives. Gotesky," I said, "you come with me." All
the relatives started to follow too. "No, I want to s ee her alone."
The moment I have her alone she starts a long spiel which means a
guilty conscience. "Doctor, you should cut my heart out but don't
touch her." It's all tragic and everything but we have to go through
with it, I tell her. She wouldn't listen. Nope. All of a sudden
right in the front corridor she starts yelling, "You killed my daughter,
you killed my daughter." A nice business. "All right, you asked for
it," I said to myself, "if you're gonna be a bastard I'll be a bastard
too." "Look," I said, "I'm not talking about you, I'm talking about
your children. Suppose she's got something they've got and they die
of it too?" I laid it on thick. So she signed it. Then I vent back
upL;tairs. I was happy as a kid. "I've got it, boys, I've gc.; that
post," I kept repeating Then we werl-.. at her. We went over the
hemispheres. The brain loeked perfect] r u,h. Nothing there, we thought.
Finally I thought we'd better cut through the cerebellum. The whole
goddam thing was a solid mass of tumor: And all along practically
not a sign. ie.s I wrong on that diarnosisl Sure that happens lots
of times. Tumors are funny that way.
Talking about autopsies, we had a fellow -who died five times.
be renewed him artificially four times. The fifth time it was no go.
He died for gob. Nobody knew what he had. Not the vaguest conception.
Only he was feeble minded and couldn't coordinate. Well, anyway we s
had to get a post on hii. The mother was running through the hall in
the usual manner yelling "You killed my son." So I figured hysteria.
This is one of those you've got to hit hard. I went up to her. "Look,"
I said, "when your son came in here he was only an idiot. He only had
fits five times a day. He just couldn't walk, talk, hear or see. He
was only practically sub -human. And we killed MIN" But she kept right
on yelling. You couldn't budge her for that post. Even the chief. At
last we tbought that we'd exit, we'd steal the brain, we were that des-
perate, we just had to get that autopwy. Meanwhile a whole bunch of
relatives were arriving. It looked bad for us. But we were stubborn.
We mouldn't sign the death certificate so they couldn't take the body
away, and you k#ow—what that means to Jews, they've got to bury the
body right away. I was getting a terrific beating from the family and
I was giving them one. The other boys were saying, "Well, if you can't
do it, you can't do it." I almost lost faith myself. Twenty relatives
were hanging on my neck. And then the tweny first arrives. A. great
big woman, she towered over me. I thought, My god, here's the end.
"Alial she says, "he doctor wants something I see. You wanta take
out a piece doctor?" "Thau's right," I said. "An I'll betcha you
won't sign the death certificate without it?" "That's right." "You
wanna work over it, hah?" Then she turns to the family, to the whole
twenty relatives, and says, "It's no use, if doctors want something they
always get it. I've been to all the births and weddings and deaths in
this family. Winiei they die it's always the same, the same crying and
you gotta give up anyway. So let them take poor Semele's brain." I
almost keeled over.
Here's another thing we're up against. The big boys aren't so
hot about attoposies, when it comes to a post they're afraid their
difignoses are screwey. Take Stinker Burns, sometimes he fills a thole
pavilion with his patients. After he's killed one of them and we want
to do a post he says, "What do you want to bother the family now? After
he does the killing: It's incompetent reactionaries like him that are
preventing a movement to make posts mandatory in this country like in
Switzerland.
Now I'll tell you a prize one, St happened around here. There was
an old man ono one of the wards, didn't have a friend in the world. One
of the internes got friendly with him. Well, he made the interne his heir,
executor or something of the estate, thought I don't know if he had a nickel.
Finally he died. AH, they rushed up to this interne to get the pose. He
draws up with that well known look on his face. "Over my dead body,tl he
says, "That old manwas my best friend and you're asking me to let you
perform an autopsy. Never." The unspeakRble son of a bitch! It took
practically all day, we even had to take him into Slimy Joe's. Finally
he gave in. Phew.
Did you ever know you can't gcA autopsies from Chinese? It's true.
They don't allow a body to be buried unless it's intact. Some people
are that way, the brain, the soul, it's mystical, they don't want it
removed. Screwey. But we have to go over them. Hell, any number
of times we don't know what they died from. We just don't know and
we've got to be able to slug a post on than to find out.
7-
A GENTLEMEN
When you come of a good family, that is, when you have blue blood in
your veins, you don't feel any pain. Getting a tooth extracted is
rust nothing. Take pvfather he would've had his tooth extracted
just for the fun of its to shay his friends that he could take it,
tat he was a thoroughbred.