
Leona Baumgartner Discusses her Trip to Russia

( New York City Municipal Archives) )
This episode is from the WNYC archives. It may contain language which is no longer politically or socially appropriate.
Leona Baumgartner discusses her month-long trip in April 1958 to the Soviet Union as part of a delegation of six American physicians, which came after a delegation of Soviet physicians visited the US in 1957. She answers questions from the audience (reporters?). She draws three conclusions for the US:
1. A reappraisal of its [medical] educational system
2. Cut down on the lag in putting into practice what is known; Give research higher priority
3. Carry out a worldwide attack on disease
She mentions Van Cliburn's visit and other events of the "thaw".
Audio courtesy of the NYC Municipal Archives WNYC Collection
WNYC archives id: 73844
Municipal archives id: LT8006
This is a machine-generated transcript. Text is unformatted and may contain errors.
I went and met a. This year to Russia and spent approximately a month there the trip began this way in the fall of one nine hundred fifty seven our government extended an invitation to the Soviet government to cooperate in an exchange of women physicians as guests of our respective countries it may be of interest to know that in the U.S.S.R. about seventy percent roughly of the physicians are women in our country the figure stands at about six. We were pretty used in this country I'm told in the State Department dad the US S. R. government respond very promptly by sending over six women who were here during the winter of last year. In May of this year six women physicians from here went over as the other part of the exchange. Of this original agreement. I traveled some twenty five hundred miles largely by air. We spent a week and Moscow then went to Leningrad went to Kiev went to Sochi went to Sukhumi where the famous world famous monkey colony is went to endure a judge to Tbilisi or what we more commonly call to plus perhaps went down to cash camp in central the central asia attic part have the U.S.S.R. and any famous old town of Samarkand outside of that and then back to Moscow and then later I came back to Tash can for I took them months busman's holiday a bit and went into the Near East and into Czechoslovakia and Poland but to see some things there and also going to in the end I just as interested in Russia. I spent my time looking into it so late at medical facilities in the evenings we did go to Opera Ballet Theatre we had evenings with Russian scientists and doctors in their homes but we spent most of our time in medical schools and the equivalent of our hospitals and outpatient departments we looked at the control of disease in their rather unique sanitary epidemiological stations as they call them we looked a great deal of medical research we looked at their rest homes and their sanatoria their maternity centers and their expensive facilities for children we looked were into rural areas but most of our time was spent in the urban areas I would have relatively little background to talk about world Russia tall we saw a city in Republic health officials research scientists doctors nurses practicing doctors teachers all kinds of people connected with the medical world. Before I went I had tried to read something about the medical setup and Russia in general as had all of the members of our group and I think one of the things that interested us very much was how outdated much of what we read was actually I think it's important to remember that Russia that the U.S.S.R. is about three times as big as the United States that it has one hundred twenty five different races innumerable languages and that nobody can be an expert at the end of a month quite obviously so what I'm saying is what I saw on the basis of the experience that I've just outlined to you. There are four overwhelming impressions it's hard to choose a little bit but I did this on separate occasions and I think I always came up with the same for the first in the intense the widespread drive for learning and for education and the respect for learning and education everybody reads you're just you just can't get over it down on the run of the elevator the taxi cab driver really the person who hands out cards in the hospital to somebody that comes along pulled records has a book on the side and is reading there is the same respect in some way for intellectuals that it seems to me at least that we had in our country when I was a youngster fifty years ago maybe I'm wrong about this but it seems to me that we had a tremendous respect for. For intellectuals I was interested that we know are prevalent in Russia for the word egghead. There is a tremendous drive for languages as they begin teaching languages at age twelve you find many people who speak English. They learn either English French or German beginning at age twelve or another example we've found full time instructors in English and French and in German in the medical schools so that you not only have a teacher and in medicine that you have a teacher in foreign languages in the medical schools themselves we were impressed with the many delegations that we saw that were visiting Russia Chinese Miriam's Indians all kinds of people from Asia in the European countries there were a couple of other American delegations when we were there there were always a great many people who could translate in their own native language. Printed material in their own native language to give these delegations right along and when they send their technicians abroad as I saw and learned in Afghanistan they're always able to send experts who speak the particular dialect that is spoken in the country to which the people go education of course is free and there isn't the amount one gets the pams on one's ability and there certainly was among the younger people that we saw a great deal of emphasis and on passing your examinations and doing well in anxiety as to whether or not you do well enough so that you could go on now despite all this there is an amazing lack of knowledge about the outside world there are many misconceptions just as I think we have as I indicated we had some part of this I would suppose would be on the basis of the control of the news. The certain there certainly is no. Lack of knowledge about. Time to fix discoveries the hospitals and research institutions and medical schools into which we went have the journals that I have here in my office there that are in any library they were about two months behind that was all the scientists that we saw no are not or if you are a know what experience may well. But in terms of knowing about for example our form of government knowing about Social Security unemployment insurance the things that we take for granted in our country they just don't know about they can't believe that poor people get medical care here when they need it. The second thing that. I felt that despite this emphasis on education there was apparently a certain rigidity and that. Thing and learned it in three May Well you kind of stayed in a. Compartmentalize kind of. Life in which you learn certain things and learn them extremely well. The general observation I would like to make is the great emphasis on medical research on research of all kinds that when I use the word scientist and research I'm really talking mostly about that in the sense that but I know that they have great laboratories they're new ones that are constantly being built we found little evidence of lack of of course they had lots of new equipment or lack of personnel or lack of supplies their top scientists never asked about needing anything more at TOG as I said before they know our literature very well. They think to all of this and perhaps the most important thing is the press to. The lifelong security and the great monetary award that are given the medical science this tends to attract and hold the best brains in the research field. There are top medical scientists have an unprecedented amount of security. There is one for example that I talk to and they're very human and you talk to them exactly and I've talked to them here and you've been in this country and I said I like to work another country for a while and he said well I always like to visit or why should I want to work any place else I can have anything from my laboratory I want to recruit anybody any other bright young people in this country that I want Incidentally they all have to speak OUR have a working knowledge of at least two foreign languages outside of Russia before they're even hired and his institute said he I have so much money I don't can't really spend it all I have lifelong security I have a lovely country and what I can take any kind of a vacation I want. Any place else is there any place else that he that I would have the same kind of life. We found the same differences and ideas and theories theories among scientists that we're accustomed to finding here I mean they don't all agree on. Chaplains working on one kind of a theory and another one is working on another time. There are differences obviously in the quality of work that is being done. But the whole scientific picture is one in which there is a great incentive for younger people to go into and stay in research. The third observation was a high priority given to help protection as they call a preventive medicine public health we call it more or less particularly for women and children they have an elaborate system of getting early medical care they have an elaborate system of giving women time off when they're pregnant they get fifty seven days off before the baby comes and fifty seven more days or so after the baby comes with full pay if they need more they get it they can get paid vacations and so forth and so on and they have an elaborate system though it still isn't up to the demand of daycare centers so the woman who goes back to work. Has her child extremely well taken care off the personnel and facilities in these institutions for mothers and children were certainly of. Good quality. It's hard to make comparisons by short time observations but I certainly would say that. You're not hate to leave a child in the institution and you saw there a tall there ratio of personnel the children appeared to me to be along that are that we have here but I want to go into that I'm sure what all laid out and what all we counted here the people took tremendous pride in the service. Personally I think we have to remember in relation to this priority given women that the country has leaned very heavily on women in the last forty years their roads have been built by women you still see the first thing I saw in Moscow coming in from the airplane wasn't laying a basketball and it was women who were putting down the asphalt on that road the streets clean everyday women that are in the streets incidentally Leningrad I think of the time the city I ever saw any place perfectly beautiful they harvest the grain they have they work in the factories they work and I think almost. Every industry except mining we were told that I would then make a very careful study about this just find this women work awfully hard by the time you do your work at the at your job and come home and cook and take care of the youngsters and do the shopping and so forth itself allowing working day I was very interested that they talked frankly about that and since we've been back there isn't a story that's. Going to the health minister and current Schaffel's And so they're trying to lessen the burden on on women in terms of working the long thing I would emphasize is the fact that any expert or perhaps any particularly any public health expert that goes there and attempts to compare what there was forty years ago from up there as to what there is today cannot help but be impressed with the great progress that has been made. The greatest progress perhaps and then in terms of getting rid of the literacy in a country of what is it two hundred million people in a period of forty years but if you look at the control of communicable disease and the fact that they have brought at least some medical care and made it available to all people and if you consider the tremendous destruction that World War two brought so that they have had to leave build a whole city their hospitals their medical schools everything your role on. That one certainly has to. Be impressed with the devotion and the hard work that has brought this much progress. Nevertheless there were a very wide variations in the quantity and the quality of the care given just as there are in this country and they admitted this right. The most about it but they certainly have admitted the variations in quality and quantity for example of a percent of the population lives in. I mean fifty six percent I'm sorry in the population lives in rural areas but only about eleven percent of the doctors and dentists are in rural areas. They talk quite frankly of their difficulties in persuading professional people to go to the rural areas to get to work in their medical institutions I asked them if they had any suggestions for us because I'm too has a problem and you know in our country and I said well they found out that it helped somewhat to pay them twice as much as they worked in a rural area or a small town they also found out that it helped if you gave them a house and if you promise to keep the house for them gave them a car and some of the areas started them off with in other words the facilities for a living they also gave them twice as much paid vacation and they worked in the city and they emphasize particularly that you couldn't get a young doctor or a good young doctor to go out and practice unless you had first building my hospital and provided him with a good library and from a surety in that he was going to get more post-graduate education if he went out there and if he stayed in the city in other words he would be brought back in for graduate patients sometimes to keep up with medicine. It's hard to judge the quantity. Whether it's. In relation to us I tried to pick up the individual places there is a town of Tashkent for example in Central Asia and in fact it's jam at MIT in the a well developed area now it's a rich area. Very rich cotton textile factories other factories in so far as it was a completely under developed place fourteen years ago Tashkent is a town of eight hundred thousand people and it has the same ratio of doctors and dentists to population as we have in a town of eight million in New York City. There is one is impressed to someone and the fact that they have not temerity of tall and looking ahead to their future need they talk a great deal about their need bark developing more doctors for the need for developing and bringing more service to the food fun and improving it in a lot. The quality as I've said before of what you saw is certainly not up. There is also a patently no temerity in reorganizing things making shifts and they don't have one particular pattern and keep it all the time we fell in with you down to their weaknesses again in the medical care system or side from the. Quality differences are a certain stratification in the institutes and in that discipline. We laugh a lot in this country about the fact that there are only one on Dr Phil Jones to the left out actually she had a feeling of this perhaps even more and that is enough to Russia not especially if they are say that there was a certain kind of if you worked and wanted to continue down one path that was the area in which you work and there perhaps wasn't as much cross-fertilization as would be desirable quality of medical care it was a quality that medical care that people get I think in general is probably not up to ours remember there are very wide variations in body and medical care people get in our country however. They are up on the literature on the medical and scientific leverage you are but they certainly do not travel as much as our people in general also if they don't know first hand what's going on in science elsewhere there you also had a feeling that there was a fair amount of paperwork. I didn't see too much of this but there were translated forest rights in the newspapers. Doctors are talking about Iraq or C.. Where they don't complain about their weaknesses and it seemed to me you for a rather simple reason because they could look backward and see the progress that had been made and on the basis of this they had faith that things were going to be better in the future they're proud of their IT if she didn't and they are exporting them to other countries they're exporting medical technicians and appointment to the underdeveloped countries for example I talked about a six million dollars This would be a car twenty five million rubles sixty and dollars and that car exportation X. ray equipment to less than that all before we were there in India they helped set up a pediatric and have video therapy set up in need of all Indian Medical Institute on cholera broke out in Afghanistan a while back they had them there technicians who spoke Afghan the Afghan of folks with two languages they speak in Afghanistan and knew the country well and had them down on for a day out with other story impressions I think. A month. Perhaps summarize somewhat philosophically a month experience that was captured going from line and night it was certainly fascinating all the time with their. I don't know whether to say that these are the next three things I want to say are far less than you are coming from but I think that one of the reasons I enjoy going on a safari like this is that I think it really charges my own that. For a job here in the yard and I always try to see what I've learned out of this not always in terms of the Pacific speak as it isn't always a six that you can transfer from one culture from one place to I'm not but it would seem to me that there are three kinds of general conclusions you're left with the first is that the time the calm for a sharp bring appraisal of our educational system and our attitude. As that is explored learning. And toward the educated man and woman. This is nothing new or world shaking out and it's being said in other reports but it comes home very sharply as a result to me as a result of this experience and it seemed to me that it seems to me that we can look at how we teach and what we teach and how we support education money wise and prestige well because I think I said a little while ago and it reminded me somewhat of the pioneer days fifty years ago that I can remember in the Middle West when the professor and the finest in the egghead were respected they were among the most respected people in the community and when an intellectual lesson was very little known. The second thing I would think we could do would be to reexamine not present medical set up in two directions the first is to see if we could cut down some blot on the way that we all recognise exists in putting into practice Floody is not so that everyone gets benefits of the discoveries that our laboratories are making and we get fast. Secondly and this I think is marm for how can we give a higher priority than medical research with the particulars due to less mainly in the security about the future in our medical schools in the search institutions. And making research for more attractive calling for the yes these things I think can be done without any loss in freedom which is our most precious commodity this freedom as we know it does not exist in Russia and these are the two things that I think that put our minds and a third way in our own country and the third one is that it seems to me we could carry out not just talk about it carry out boldly in the world a large cooperative program of attack on disease and disability for all the people of the world that kind of international medical research cooperative like the I G Y U S M thing and needed the geophysical mirror that is teaching so many people teaching scientists and so much about the physical things in our world. I would think this could. Be done easily it has bipartisan support in our country the Russians expressed great interest in this idea. At the same time. We could certainly began with a much more. Well a much better supported let's put an exchange of research people on ideas and I would hope this would be not on the basis of a month tour but on the basis of people working in each of those laboratories and have a plan and kind of program a similar doesn't even Geophysical Year and I suggest that we take the lead in this with our superior or sources. Our wonderful son to fix leadership it would seem to me in the medical world particularly we are natural in terms of supporting this idea they think to these three suggestions of course in a very simple way. And that is the need to instill in our young people what I think I would like to call an air of the fact that the world that they have a part to play in a wonderful world and something wonderful happened just around the Sun I think those are the main points that I'd like to made you talk about the people in the life of the points. I think we all like them I don't think Americans can we can keep from liking Russian people if you see them. In their homes in a play and work because they're so very much like us in many ways they are direct they are friendly again they reminded me of those hardworking pioneer people I knew well when I was a youngster I would certainly talk to the union as easily as friendly to the medical scientists in the U.S.S.R. as we did in other countries. The myth makes one believe that with the many disagreements and misunderstandings there are largely for many reasons but certainly partially because people and leaders are poorly informed that everything we could do to encourage these changes people of ideas of publications with the free flow of information the change of culture the people must go went mad over that PM as you should and should see it was really wonderful of finances part delegation for those with anything we can do to help the exchange of ideas. With the one yes. There are those who they have eight hundred thousand people there and the ratio of doctors and dentists to people is the same as it is in New York City for our eight million one roof Well I have to do so with take we have roughly twenty five thousand doctors and dentists in New York City for eight million people and they have the same ratio and Cash can't which would be was one hundred one five hundred. Dollars road your bill. It was my general impression that the quality of medical care was not up to two R.'s I qualify that was saying that there are wide variations in both our country and there is and it is hard to judge and make these general as ations I usually don't like to make them but I knew you were going to ask me that so I thought I might just as well say that I. Think this they have met that you know that there is much to be improved in their quality of medical care. For you. No. It hasn't but I would think you'd not have not had time to arrive. In the morning. And. You know I was not there that time you'll have to talk to Dr Henry who's up at. At Columbia I was not there I did not see this. Review of your book you know what I know same thing that you know that's been in the papers or from what you said. Doctors do have some private practice they work six hours a day in hospitals or clinics they may want and get paid far if they wish to an additional three hours that is and they can have a job and a half and there are some of them not many but there are admittedly some of them who have some private practice on the soft. When you. Were only did you see your your organizer on a on a district basis and. In the part of town where you are there is what they call a poly Kenny. And you go to the poly clinic which is the same as not patient Department essentially and if the doctor finds in the matter with you. He will and you have to go to the hospital room if not you get your treatment there or the doctor comes and visit you in the home I went into homes with doctors and and seen patients in the polyclinic a week ago went followed up in the home to see what the patient was like and now we want to see another woman who retired a dentist with hypertension who called up the clinic that morning and said that you had some spots in front of your eyes and feel very good on the doctor line ups and you are. Very heart of her that it's very difficult to compare pages of anything in Russia here because dollars to dollars dollars to Robles don't mean anything in terms of. What you can purchase and all I would the one thing that struck me where the wide variations of pay within the doctor's group themselves that is from the earliest of the doctor who just gets out of medical school to the top there's a very wide variation in the pay. The question of quality of medical care I perhaps should have pointed out that the doctor who starts to practice there has roughly sixteen years of training behind him while a doctor here has twenty two years of training behind they are in the proving this I mean they're extending the amount of education that Them doctors get where. They. Are. As far as we know they are yes that is in other words they have have made enormous progress in controlling. The common communicable diseases that they had forty years ago. The exact figures if and when they become available I think will give us a more exact picture one of their problems is they haven't had a census in a long time so that they are I think per hour bothered by the face of the population that you take these great figures on they are certainly interested in terms of. Research in cancer heart disease the same things that we are here. And you mentioned these to me. It was a. Factor a the epidemic centers are those different from the only one of those are different from that interestingly enough this is one of the examples thirty of the weight of the flexible they are to begin with a senator and a lot of interest on this thing thing they call the epidemiological sanitary Center this was a center that looked and saw to it that no clean water and so forth were clean and at the same time went out on epidemics and believed disease contagious disease broke out and it was internally separated from the polyclinic are the hospital that was taking care of sick people well now they say we have gone come far enough in the control of our contagious and other disease and if this isn't efficient Let's try putting together so they're changing their total of their decentralizing their control some water and changing their arses ational structure but we have nothing comparable to this kind of a separate building in which they epidemiologist in the cemetery and. Are jointly working on. You know. I really can't discuss this thing because we did a month and time enough to do I know things and having just one of the fields we did not find out about the car trade was. Brought up quite casually and in terms of well we have a department of five here a student spends so much time on some of the hours in medical education in psychiatry that more than that I can't discuss. You know. The whole. Truth. I don't know. Very well as to the first one was in relation to lung cancer was I know your alcoholism Well we have did not go into this in any arm didn't come up and we didn't go into it and we did seize in the time did people on the street. Number two on lung cancer they had the same they said it was controversial in their country just as we say it is controversial in our country but doctors who were smoking it each other once in a while and said I'm going to take the filtered one and there were the same kind of laughs and. I've gone back and forth about it but there is here we heard nothing about the contraceptive field and did not go into it they have legalized abortion if you. Will go there if you will. Probably. Hear. A lot. We tried to figure out how much freedom there was in terms of locating where they want and I think all of us got the impression that there was much more freedom than we had felt there was I mean we had taken it for granted that you couldn't choose that you couldn't change but on the basis of well for example we had a very good interpreter. Medical. A woman three years out of medical school who acted as an interpreter for us she had started out as an engineer and she had started out as an architect in like architecture so she quit at the end of two years I mean this is just what you get in conversation one and you do when and where were you at such and such a time she had our story is that she had put architecture at the end of a year and a half and was a two or something and going in that. She took the usual three years because most of them work for three years in a poly clinic or something the majority of them except the ones that are very good that go directly and do some kind of a postgraduate study for being a scientist a newly not. Of this girl took the same three years and now she's in the process of making up her mind whether or not she would like to take a job in the Ministry of Health or whether or not she would like to go on in the fall of G.E. she had hoped to be a surgeon and she found that she had an allergy or hands she had a terrible allergy of the Malahide and detergents and a whole variety of things and it just wasn't comfortable for her to be a surgeon so she had to switch from the a surgeon the something else and she was we had a long talk one night she live my advice as to whether or not one should go into administrative Medicine at this stage of the game I want to not she should go ahead I'm going to follow Jesus which she thought she might do she has signed up for her exams for college. She has no feeling that she will ever live any place at all except Moscow. The same kind of strategy. Tended sun block we've got to keep people in the same institutes and in the same localities all over again you found that well down in Sochi there was a chap who wanted a pathologist for a new do not exceed the institute he had and he had gotten ahold of his professor in Moscow and gotten a recommendation just as we do for a couple of young bright graduates now they had to advertise the post and the chap had to apply and his qualifications had to be gone over by several groups and so forth it was a lot of red tape to getting them appointed the people on the dock the chap from Moscow that he wanted to point it down to his PA It's been something you know what goes on. Here. For all of their world for the honor a very low life I'm good for I was to have you come to that. To Russia to the U.S.S.R. Yes never to learn to say the U.S.S.R. and Russia was only a part of the US. I was buying all my life. Or in here. For a little more to kill them all in all it's a sense to is still going because the fire was late I had not got to go talk to him we did get a little bit he did tell you about. The induction one only on the. Present opinions of the mine. Without Medicaid I can give you the only I want to both of these out of the trust you had a terrible time the presents itself it took about look I might. Get tickets right I did go down to Carlsbad to see their holes bogged down there on that side I'm only interested ness in the other doctor from Yale who had traveled and travelled with me. Then down there so. That we saw no medical people such as child Slovakia I did try to look up one pediatrician knew it worked here in a New York hospital that I was on vacation with response from anyway sending a telegram. Be in Poland. I saw two. Women the physician. In Krakow and spent some time with them one of them was there wasa laboratory and has for thirty years she's a woman of three from the seven. The other one was. A dermatologist. Before the war. Was Jewish evacuated her husband was an internist he was evacuated to from the cells to the euro and in this way the skate on the Nile ocean Warsaw ghetto and then they came back and as she says dermatology was not much of a thing to practice either and in rush hour and Poland the day so she's working as a physician and a vocational high school she visits is keenly interested in finding out what adolescents want to do and what they can do physically and then line up the factories and looking after you so she really knows about this condition. These people nor no one that we saw in high their countries to be asked about. Her life the standard of living is certainly much lower and middle top on Czechoslovakia as. Well. They have. The same well now only about thirty of them a major problem of all they have and I remember but I have to look it up in the ME in the two laboratories that I was in they had a sign for them from poverty on the pre-marital last week but I have looked at one zero zero. Zero. I don't know how one. Would work. Well they lay. In the blood substitute field they use certain products that we don't do. That I would think would be worth investigating. Only. They certainly have a a much higher. To bring you out and grow and Pavlovian conditioning and we do theirs and under an earlier life of interest and. Have a look at the Pavlovian theory it's it's every where. They have. An opportunity particularly in Sukhumi. They have an opportunity because of the the large monkey calmly they have and that they've had for so very long. On the stability of the staff they are there they have an opportunity to make many kinds of observations in that home and that we would not have the need some are coming here Dr Levin went with me as probably knows as much about monkey Tani's all over the world and somebody else he's charge of the Almighty Tom And so this is I don't know when the drama that this was was her out of the way there were. Approaches to study. Reviving resuscitation that Dr Henley thought were interesting approaches that we might very well run out followup. Yeah I did not. I don't think this is nearly as important nobody on the roads and your. Medical care. You don't you pay for medicine unless you're in the hospital you pay for your medicines that you don't do NOT pay for. Much of the private doctor privately. On top of that you can go as I said to a doctor private This is not laid off from them but if. You're poor and then you pay. For that. There are people there Bill or you or. As far as the people I saw I thought they had the same desire for peace that. Border. They don't know very much about fluoridation they think it would be a good idea they're looking at it from the engineering aspect of spies on this is as much as I could find out about it I couldn't investigate every said that. There are. Not that I know of nothing on. But. On the faces of other people who have been to the military hospitals and let me see I think Dr Marty went to a military hospital the quality of care and they're not very very good or the good has anything to. Do. You know. There are many things about us that that they don't understand. They have. They're afraid of atomic submarines this came up why do we have a ring of atomic submarines right around their country as I said before they are on. Seem to us very of their knowledge about the rest of the world in the middle. But we had many many many times spontaneous when they brought up. The subject and they said that they think I was the probably the American people want to hear you still say as there are a lot of people but it was our leaders learn this and it's this is the reason for our view this is not. You have a good. Whatever blame came in terms of war mongering they put on our neighbors they're very polite people but I we had a feeling I'm nevertheless that there was a very sincere and a feeling that they they as people certainly were not looking for a war that the way it comes out is. Take a time like if it was almost flattened out very war is rebuilt today with enormous change is with you to fall in the streets etc I mean these people say my words can't live through another one of these. Were before. Or or. I think they thought there would not be you. Know we were not we had one press conference when we got through we read a statement where our individual for instance by. The New York Times the long time Daily Worker and about three or four Russian newspapers. We didn't seek out the press. We were in Moscow a very short time with the unknown whether or not they played one of our something. With. We were all at one other time and I. Thought you know one other place you see in this some cool me the local press came and talked to us and took pictures we were covered by a photographer the whole time we were there. And there were each one of us wrote a short statement for the Soviet woman at their request we did have a long conference with the ministers minister a mistress of health I don't know which one you want to call your caller and I have not I'm career going to at the end of our of our trip. I saw personally something out of. Some of all of your friends the cover of the thread was wrong. Jargon of the times was around I saw an array Shapiro several times in my head now in this country pretty well. Goes. Well they don't all speak I mean there were usually somebody in an institute that spoke English I'm not oh we were with it we have translators with us we had one Russian speaking person in our own delegation and we heard very carefully and she kept very good track of us and she said they never once and his friends got an accurate translation everything was done with a single exception. And that was it sometimes that when the tones were unusually flowery she'd leave off a few educators that were there for the benefit of both the Russian who were listening to that who had to listen to this twice you say and for the Americans I mean after you. You know run to the health of our respective people enough times why you don't need to have all E.I.G. to use it are in the book and they they love language they just love to take over the Georgians with your advantage and give a toast this goes on and on and on but I think the reason we could communicate. To answer your question your basic question was not language but because of mutual interest and mutual professional interest. You know he had they didn't have any word if only they said over five six people three of whom spoke English pretty well and. They were much that they two were more of a discipline by that they were they had different interests within the medical world see each one of us had some kind of a different interest in the Russian women that came over here each one of us had there for an interest in one night and Tash gammon or tired coming home to something I said Natasha Come on break down and tell me what didn't you like and what did you like when you came to the United States so she said well she said we got awful tired of listening to everybody else find out about there especially when we wanted to find out about ours Well this was our number one gripe in Russia you know we had to listen to what the other person was interested in and then she said we got we got awful tired of said there were just times that we were like have done nothing but go to go to your ten cents drop for something or other and get off the this was ours I mean there weren't two on two different I we were highly entertaining five. By this we saw too much too fast in this country and this is what happened to. Me I don't know anything more about you really so you know if you get a chance of going to catch up with what's going on in the department of the part of those wonderful it's going to get good sets of clippings and all kinds of things but one thing that may entertain you is the fact that you cannot find a single American newspaper in Russia. And not once did I find an American his paper I found the London Daily work for president in life and I found no other way that I could buy on a newsstand in the life and I think they were probably some of them may have been on the libraries but nothing major violent to stand as a tourist with the way we used to keep track of things of to put a mosque down and call on either the American embassy or the Ministry of Health and ask them to tell us what was going on with the folding is. What. Yes there was Dr jean can line and see if I can give that to you Dr jean Henry who is an associate professor of law now that we can get it for you to get lives I mean you've got those ten for the idols that are Dr Henry was an anesthesiologist and these the other New Yorker Dr Helen Thompson was the leader of the delegation and she was the first and a pediatrician from Hopkins and interested in Friday at surgery. Dr Margaret Sloan isn't Ministre her father and the research scientists at National Research Council take your you and blood relatives is a person in charge of the National Blood program Dr Esther Martin was a cancer practitioner in Cincinnati used to be in medical school up there past present American Women's Medical Association and interested in chemotherapy of cancer and on that film a big one was at the National Institutes of Health Research a person interested in cancer again that's exactly what. Well I had. An interesting time as I said to Michael Ministry of Health sometime you know you're going to find some strange stories about me and find out that I am nothing but an international spot over here because I wore so many hats I after all have a Ph D. in the bacteriologist Once upon a time zone an area where I might want to find out on the ways I also check medical education out of the battery of laboratory every place I went to so I became a bacteriologist and I would carry around a kind of public health expert and I asked all the question about questions about death rates and facilities and ratios of doctors to people and so on and so on and I acted on also qualified survive communication for us or pediatrics of the next day I was on the pediatrician that was very confused these were the three areas in which I took specific books went to private. And further. Yes yes they do in other words you can take you can take this basic sixteen years in medicine and you can go on from there into what they call a can of the C. of medicine which is an additional three years of training during which time you do a thesis then after that you can go on to their highest at their highest business which is becoming an academician of which there is no richer and that takes an additional number of years during which time you do a thesis at and at some stage of the game if you want to you can also go in there and take their two year course in public health. That they give the and specialized institutes they also have a system of post-graduate education whereby as a doctor you can go back into and get some additional training this is obviously necessary because many of the doctors that are there remember were trained twenty and thirty years ago when they had very very poor facilities for training and they they recognize this and have to bring them back not all of them come but they have the opportunity. You. Know I found plenty of people who spoke German. But many of them did as many fact there were several places that I carried on in German you get your French help you also. And I had thought they were going to bring. As and with it I think is firs as one could tell they attempted to answer your questions and much to see what you wanted to see now we didn't get to see everything that we wanted to see but we had an enormous list and we were six people with six different kinds of interests and that made it difficult I think there may have been some selection in the store where we saw things for example I said I wanted to visit in a home I did visiting a home but I visited in Tbilisi and Tbilisi is well known for having the highest standard of living and the best housing in Russia I think they didn't want me to go off and visit probably in Moscow the other hand in Moscow there were a great many scientific institutes to be seen and there weren't very many into place so I don't know don't don't know exactly why it happened that I had I mean it would be difficult for me to say what this is what happened used to I wanted to please and yet it was not a rainy day in Moscow.