Tonight the DuPont Company brings you A Chance for Jimmy starring Basil Rathbun on the cavalcade of America. You know why you're alive today? Do you know why you didn't die when you were a child? Or what it is that's keeping your own children healthy and vibrant and sometimes troublesome? Well there's an excellent chance that you owe your life and your children's lives to a man you never heard of. And in tonight's play we're going to tell you about him. But first here's Gain Whitman. A highly polished gleaming floor is a joy to the eye. But danger can lurk in that polished surface. That's why we recommend DuPont Self Polishing Wax. It has the added advantages of being slip retardant and water resistant and gives your floors a smooth rich luster. DuPont Self Polishing Wax is easy to apply and stands up under hard wear. It can be used on linoleum or wood floors or on painted, varnished, lacquered or shellacked surfaces. Try DuPont Self Polishing Wax. A product of better things for better living through chemistry. And now Basil Rathbun as Dr. Francis Henry Brown in A Chance for Jimmy on the DuPont Cavalcade of America. I lived, worked and died many years ago. As a young doctor in Boston during the Civil War, I examined recruits for the Union armies and was alarmed at the poor health of so many young people. How could unhealthy youth make a great nation? And so when peace came, I decided to devote the rest of my life to the health of the young, especially children. You know how it is with a child when he's sick. It's the same in your day as it was in mine. Let's say you have a boy. Let's say his name is Jimmy. He's six years old. One moment he seems to be perfectly well. Mom. Yes? Would you read me the funnies? No dear. You gotta read me these funnies. Now Jimmy. Oh mom, you gotta. Is that any way to ask me? Please? Jimmy, I told you yesterday if I had to read you those Saturday funnies, I would not read you the Sunday funnies. Now I gave you the choice dear. I could go on reading you funnies all weekend and I'm not going to do it. And neither's your father. I'll read them myself then. That's right. I can read some of these words. Of course you can. Mrs. O'Brien says you're getting on very well at school with your reading. She's quite pleased with the way you're doing. Mom, I know what this says. BANG. B-A-N-G. See? That's right. Um, is this a jet plane, mom? Um, no. It seems to be a rocket or something. Gosh. They're shooting mail to California. Something they'll be doing in a few years I suppose. Why has this man got this funny look on his face? Oh, he's worried I guess. What about? Well, this man had just told him that someone was seen tampering with a rocket. And so. What's he saying? Well, he says, look here Morgan, you'd better. Jimmy. I am not going to read you these funny. I don't want you to. I'll read them myself. I just want you to help me. Yes, he seems to be quite all right. A little extra touchy perhaps, but you don't think about that later. Then, when you're at lunch. Eat your meat, dear. I don't want it. Well, you like chicken. It doesn't taste good. He's even stuffing himself with candy again. I have not. I saw you eating a lollipop. And I only had one. And I don't want anything to eat. You assume it's the lollipop that has spoiled his appetite. So you think no more about it until later. Then that night he sleeps restlessly and calls out a few times. You don't worry too much about that either. But next day, an hour after he leaves for school, he's back home again. I was sick. Oh, you poor boy. Here, let me feel your head, dear. Wait, you've got a temperature. I don't feel so good. Young man, you're going to bed. You find he has a bad sore throat and slight fever. It seems to be a cold, so you don't call the doctor right away. But the next few days, Jimmy keeps on being sick. His digestion is all upset. Then one day... I got a pain. Dear, dear. I don't know. So you call the doctor at once. Suddenly Jimmy seems listless and very thin. His lips are so dry. His fever is up. His forehead is grayish and his eyes glassy. The doctor comes and examines him. We'd better get him to a hospital at once. That's how it is in your day of 1947, and that's how it was in mine. But from here on, the story is very different. I'd like to turn the clock back now, back about 80 years, and take you with me, you and Jimmy and his father. I want to let you see how it would be in those days just after the Civil War, when I was working at a hospital in Boston. In those days, medicine was still somewhat in the Middle Ages. The existence of bacteria had not been proved. We knew nothing about antiseptic methods, almost nothing about nutrition, nothing about blood chemistry. In fact, very little about anything. And much of what we thought we knew was wrong. Our hospital was still full of wounded veterans at that time, and when someone like Jimmy arrived it was our custom just to put him in with everyone else. Doctor, is Jimmy going to be all right? I'm so worried about the way he's breathing. We'll give him every care we can, ma'am. The ward is down this corridor. Can you manage, sir? Yes, I can carry him. He's so light suddenly, poor kid. Has he been in pain? When we started out with stagecoach he complained of pain, but then it seemed to go away. That's good. His breath is rather raspy, isn't it? It's been that way all day. What does he have, doctor? Our own doctor didn't tell us. He just said we ought to bring him here at once. Yes, Doctor, what is it, please? In this way, this is the ward. Here now. Wait a minute, little boy. Now we're putting him in this corner bed. What a pity, think, doctor. Why do I have to have a kid next to me? Say this is going too far. He'll be all night long. Now men, please, please. We've got to give everybody the best care we can. We have no other bed for this child. I don't think he'll be much trouble. I'm awfully sorry, doctor. It's all right, madam. He'll be all right. Attendant? Yes, doctor. Come here, please. Yes, doctor. This child has the usual digestive symptoms and high fever. We'll give him a dose of tincture of opium to slow up his digestive tract. Right, doctor. Shall we also use a leech, sir? Yes, we'd better bleed him a little, see if we can get those poisons out of him. Yes, doctor. Well, we'll leave him in your care now. I'll attend to him. He'll be yammering all night. Doctor, are you sure he'll be all right? He'll get the best care we can give him, madam. This way, please. Oh, I can't understand it. Last Sunday he was fine. I remember I was reading him a picture book about the Pony Express carrying the males. And then suddenly, a little while later, he was sick. Just what is it he has, doctor? Yes, please tell us. I'm afraid it's what a lot of children get. We call it tiflitis. How many, many times during those years we pronounced the mysterious word tiflitis, prescribed a tincture of opium and leeching and sometimes a purgative. And how many times we watched those young bodies dry up and shrink away while the breath grew raspier. I remember how their breathing used to haunt me. Oh, don't worry about it, Brown. At least relax over your dinner. How can I help worrying? What do we mean calling ourselves doctors? Do we even know what we're doing? Well, all we know is that the kid is very sick and that it's tiflitis. Do we even know that? Hmm? Do we even know that there is such a thing as tiflitis? Well, of course we do. Do we? Oh, look here, Brown. Light your pipe. Let's order another cup of coffee. Waiter. Tiflitis. Take it easy, Brown. You've had a hard day. Don't eat your heart out. Can't be a doctor that way. Tiflitis. We invent a word and it sweeps aside a thousand problems. Waiter. Yes? But it doesn't solve them. Two more cups of coffee, please, and some pastry. It's true. They all have that dried up look and upset digestion and can't keep food or water inside them. I know that isn't the way children react to all sorts of diseases, diseases that affect adults in other ways. Oh, that's possible, but where does it get you? Look, the kids that have died of it, you've examined some of them. Sure. Are they all the same? No, there are always puzzling differences. Exactly. Some of them had a lung infection, some had a kidney infection, and some looked more as if they had some kind of epidemic fever, but we just called them all tiflitis. Well, we do know there's little we can do to help them except the opium and the leach. To help them? We know we can help them? How do we know they don't die of what we do for them and not what they've got? No brownie. Your coffee, sirs. Oh, fine. And here's some pastry. I brought you some chocolate and egg clays. Oh, very good. Thank you. I tell you, we haven't begun to know what we're doing, and this is what must be done. We're going to start a hospital for children only as they've begun to do in Europe based on the idea that a child is not just a small adult. Mm, good. A place not only to treat children, but to learn about them. There we'll record and study carefully every single case until we reach the day when a doctor can stand beside a patient and know what's going on inside that body and the heart, the bloodstream, the lungs, and not feel appalled by his own ignorance. So you're off on that again. Children's hospital. Frankly, brown, do you think the profession will ever back you on it? They should. To them, it may seem like criticism the way they're doing things. Then we must go to the public for help. I tell you, I'm going to see this idea through if I have to collect money on street corners. And so, ladies and gentlemen of Boston, I appealed you in the name of all that you hold dear. I ask you to... No, no, no, no, please don't go yet. Don't go. I'm almost finished. Just one more moment. Please, please. I thought it was going to be about politics. Now please, friends. The health of your children and of our country demands that we take this forward step. Several colleagues joined me in appealing to you. Help us finance now, in this city, a hospital for children. Sir, sir, mister? Yes, boy? I have a nickel. Can I give a nickel? Oh, oh, thank you. People of Boston, there are children dying needlessly in our hospitals. I assure you this boy's nickel can help. Thank you, my boy. Thank you. May I give something? Oh, thank you. I'd like to give a dollar. Thank you. I'll give something. Oh, thank you so much. Thank you. You are listening to Basil Rathbun as Dr. Brown in A Chance for Jimmy on the cavalcade of America sponsored by the DuPont Company, maker of better things for better living through chemistry. Soon after the Civil War, with the help of the people of Boston, we founded the Children's Hospital, the first of its kind in the United States, a place where children would be treated and studied by specialists. As the years went on, much was learned, but always so much remained to be learned. And now once more I want to turn the clock and again take you with me, you and your sick boy Jimmy and his father. This time we'll make it 1900, the turn of the century. Sick boys called Jimmy still came to us looking and breathing the same way. The symptoms are the same, but the words are different. What do you make of it? No doubt about it, I'm afraid. I wish they got him here earlier. Has it burst? I'm afraid so. They brought him here in a train. I don't like the way he's breathing. No, it's bad. Get him ready for operation, will you? I'll go and tell the parents. Yes, doctor. Oh, you want to use either? Yes, please. Oh, doctor. Hello, doctor. There you are. Any news for us, doctor? Yes, I have. What has Jimmy got? I'm afraid it's a pancreatic cancer. What is it? It's a pancreatic cancer. What is it? It's a pancreatic cancer. What is it? I'm afraid it's appendicitis. Is that something awfully serious? We have to operate. Oh, dear. I think I read something about that. Isn't that an infection down around the abdomen somewhere? Yes, it is. The appendix seems to have burst, too. That means complications. Oh, doctor. Have we done something terrible? No, no, no, no. You did all you could. Now it's up to us. Last week he seemed to have just a sore throat. That's why I didn't call a doctor at once. That often happens. There's a certain kind of sore throat that sends its infection to the appendix by blood stream. It's something we don't quite understand just yet. Well, has the cold lowered his resistance much, doctor? Somewhat, I'm afraid. I see. Now, I'm going to do this operation at once. They're preparing the boy now. Oh, please, believe me. This is the only way. We'll do our best. I know, doctor. Yes, doctor. Goodbye. Oh, Jim. Oh, now, darling, hang on. Hold tight. Oh, I'm so worried. Jimmy's so small and... Oh, now, don't worry, dear. Be brave now. In a way, we're very lucky. A few years ago, they didn't even know what this was. And now they do. And they know how to operate. So have courage, darling. They know so much now. We should be thankful. We're living in 1900. That breathing, the dry, loose skin that looks too large for him. Tiflitis, we used to call it. And now we know better. I wonder if we do. What does that breathing mean? That is, in a bad way? Yes, but doesn't it sound as though his body were hungry for something? I mean, reaching for something that we don't know how to give him. Yes, that's just the feeling it always gives me. If we could only answer that hunger before we begin, strengthen him somehow so that he had some decent chance to live through this. You don't dare delay, do you? No. No, it's got to be done. Now. Ready for ether? Oh, I wish we didn't have to do this. The surgeon is a lonely man. At least we were in those days of 1900. For the men of the laboratory, the men of research, were only just beginning to give us the knowledge we needed. But they were looking forward. Because always at our children's hospital, the very center of our plan was research, the patient gathering of facts for tomorrow. And so as the years went on, various doctors at our hospital and elsewhere began to learn what was happening inside the boy with the heavy breathing, and to learn how they could help him, and help the surgeon beside him. And so before we turn that clock forward again, let me tell you some of the things that we learned here through endless study and observation is what we began to piece together. Death began in the sea. There in salt waters of the equatorial region, in prehistoric times, living cells had an environment that was almost unchanging. Before they could come ashore, eons ago, they had somehow to bring that environment with them. And so within the human frame, we find all cells and tissues bathed in a salty fluid whose components are those of sea water. Our vital organs still live in a fluid world, old as the EOC in age. We learned that the human body still depends on the constancy of this fluid environment. When in illness, the body loses reserves of fluid and becomes dehydrated, life is in danger. We learned that to a child, loss of fluid is even more important than to an adult. He goes downhill faster. As the child loses moisture, he also loses valuable salts. Meanwhile, his body burns its sugar and fat reserves. His breathing becomes raspy. Then we realized that life can be saved only by restoring the fluid balance and the missing salts and providing sugar for fuel. The child's body is hungry. How could we restore the fluid and salt equilibrium of a sick child? We knew in my day that the answer we were looking for was within reach. And I knew that in future, when a boy called Jimmy would lie on the operating table, it would not be as it was in 1900. And now, let's turn that clock forward. This time to your day, 1947. Nurse? Yes? Are they nearly ready in the operating room? Yes, doctor. While they're setting up, the intern will give them intravenous injection. Yes, doctor. We'll inject 800 cc's of normal saline solution with 5% glucose. Yes, doctor. And we'll follow this with injection of glucose and water. Yes, doctor. That's all for the present. Later on, I'll call the parents. Would you come this way a minute, please? Oh, yes, doctor. You mean we can see Jimmy before the operation? Yes, I'd like you to. Just giving him an injection to put some vitality into him before the operation. You'll see. This way. Yes. Come in. All finished, nurse? Yes, doctor. Well, he looks better already. Now watch. You'll see the change come over your boy. What change? You'll see. What? His color is coming back. He's waking up. Doctor, it's like a miracle. Mom. Jimmy. Hello, mom. Oh, Jimmy. Hello, son. Hello, dad. Where are we? Well, we're in the Children's Hospital in Boston. Gosh. Did we come by jet propulsion? No, dear. You came by ambulance all the way from home. And I guess we didn't get here any too soon. Apprentice Addis is sometimes very hard to spot in a charm. It can easily fool you. I know. Oh, Jimmy, isn't it wonderful to see you suddenly looking so, so like yourself? What day is it? Why, it's Saturday, son. Could you read me the funny stat? I'm afraid you have other business, Jimmy. Oh, you watch. He'll breeze through it fine now. You see, these injections have all the salts he's been needing and also some sugar. Just think, in the old days, instead of injecting fluid into him, they used to draw it out with leeches and percutis. That was only a few years ago. Doctor, how much danger is there from peritonitis? Well, that's not too dangerous anymore. This is probably a strep infection. Nearly always is in cases that come from sore throats. And strep is easy with sulfur. That sure is good to hear. Certainly is, doctor. Well, son, so long. So long, Jimmy. So long. We'll see you later, dear. Now your son Jimmy goes in for his operation, an operation that 80 years ago was unknown, 60 years ago was almost always fatal, and 30 years ago was very dangerous. But this is 1947. Scalpel. The surgeon is at work quickly, skillfully. Snap. He knows his job. Knows the thinness of a child's intestines different from an adult's. Sponge. He knows that the child's restored bloodstream will see him through. Tie. Each cell of the child's body is bathed in its prehistoric salty water. Cut. This boy has today almost 100% chance of recovery. From behind the surgeon stands a team, the team of research men that gives a hospital its ever growing strength. Stitch. The team that brings this man to his work with the knowledge that he needs. That is the story behind our children's hospital and every modern hospital. And that's the story of a chapter in modern medicine. And then the part played in it by Dr. Francis Brown and in the hospital he founded. It's also the story of numberless doctors and researchers whose patience and skill have made modern hospital techniques what they are. But above all, it's the story of Jimmy. Jimmy the boy who grew up to become a good citizen and a healthy American. America does not sell Jimmy short, and Jimmy in turn serves America well. He's here when we need him, grinning, a little impudent sometimes, but always with his shirt sleeves rolled up and his muscles tense for the job at hand. America can count on Jimmy, and one reason is that Americans like Dr. Francis Henry Brown have always realized how important Jimmy is. Basil Rathlin will be back in just a moment, but first here's Gaine Whitman speaking for DuPont. In the operating rooms of our hospitals today, doctors achieve things that would have been called miracles only a few short years ago. I happened to visit an operating room a few days ago with a surgeon friend of mine, and to my surprise the walls were not white. They were a soft green. My friend told me this color is used because it reduces glare and helps doctors and nurses see more comfortably. Color is now used in this scientific way not only in hospitals, but in industrial plants. Probably you have always thought of paint as I have, giving your house a coat of paint to protect it, or tinting the walls of a room to make it more attractive. But industry has learned that color can do more, much more. In practically every industry, accurate seeing is essential. Dull drab machines soak up light, and so do soiled or dirty walls. Wet walls, on the other hand, produce glare that causes eye strain and fatigue. All of these result in decreased production, more rejects, and lowered morale. DuPont color conditioning is a scientific plan for the application of color to overcome these industrial hazards. It suggests colors for machines that make seeing easier. It provides for color on walls to do away with harmful glare. It can make rooms with high temperatures seem cooler, or cool rooms seem warmer. All of this adds up to increased production, fewer rejects, greater safety, and improved morale. Color conditioning has been widely tested in hundreds of plants. It uses no more paint. It only calls for better planning. For further information about this scientific way of using paint in your plant or business, write a letter on your business stationery to DuPont, Wilmington, Delaware, and ask for the free booklet on this subject. Color conditioning is a development of the DuPont Company, maker of better things for better living through chemistry. I'd like to introduce the youngster who played Jimmy on our program tonight, David Anderson, who has something very important to say to all of us. Jimmy, how are you feeling after all your operations? I'm feeling fine, thanks Mr. Rathbone. But there's a lot of kids who don't. One of the things that hasn't been licked yet is infantile paralysis, so everyone should remember the March of Dimes. It ends this Thursday night. Hey, Shear, I just thought we ought to give everything we can, and I'm sending mine along right now. That's right, David. Let's all send our dimes and dollars to our local March of Dimes headquarters. Thank you, David. Good night. Next week, the DuPont Cavalcade brings you Burgess Meredith in the magnificent failure. It's the exciting and dramatic story of Josiah White, a man with a million ideas. His greatest idea, which placed America on a par with the world in its economic freedom, was the development of a black stone, which we know today as anthracite coal. Be sure and listen next Monday to the magnificent failure, starring Burgess Meredith on the Cavalcade of America. The music for tonight's DuPont Cavalcade was composed by Arden Cornwell and conducted by Donald Borey. Our cavalcade play was written by Eric Barnall. In the cast with Basil Rathbun were David Anderson as Jimmy, Carl Frank as Jimmy's father, Alice Yorman as Jimmy's mother, House Jamison, Clyde North, and Alan Hewitt as the doctors. This is Ted Pearson inviting you to listen next week to Burgess Meredith in the magnificent failure on the Cavalcade of America, brought to you by the DuPont Company of Wilmington, Delaware. This is NBC, the national broadcasting company.
