While in Berlin, the 82nd Division medical officers were given a chance for a week’s leave on the Riviera. The supposedly less fortunate ones, including myself, received temporary duty at a hospital in Paris. Many of the Paris hospital’s medical officers had been rotated back to the States for discharge. I was fortunate to be assigned for six weeks to the 23rd General Hospital, the only American hospital inside the city of Paris, The 23rd occupied the Hopital de la Pitié where Charcot had been chief. It was located right opposite a metro stop on the Blvd St. Michael. Thus all of Paris was within easy reach.
I flew from Berlin to Paris in a C47. I am sure that the pilot was using visual navigation, following railroad tracks and flying just over the tree tops all the way to Paris. The day I arrived in Paris the European Command had decided that the occupation marks would no longer be exchanged into dollars. However, we were lucky that the airport bank had not received that notification. I was able to exchange all my occupation German marks for a money order to be sent home.
My duty with the 23rd General Hospital, which was the University of Buffalo unit, was a great one. Their Chief of the Venereal Disease Service had just left. Therefore, I became the head of that service I did five to ten lumbar punctures every morning, and administered medications, penicillin and intra-gluteal bismuth.**
The Army required that any referral from other services had to be formal, I was fortunate that the chief of the Medical Services was Dr. Brown head of medicine at the University. He would send me a referral complete with all the answers, which I used in my “consultation response”.
All afternoon I was free for sightseeing the city. In the evening, we doctors met at the Hospital’s small officer’s club’s bar for a few drinks before going to bed. It was here that I was introduced to aged Armagnac which the bar tender rightly professed to be better than a similar aged cognac. One of the other doctors came from Omaha and wanted me to join his medical group when I was discharged. However, although tempted I felt that because my brother was career Navy; I should return to Plainfield since my parents were getting on years and my sister was an invalid.
Any visitor to Paris should go to the opera. Unfortunately, at that time the Opera was closed for the season. However, the Opera Comique was in session. We obtained tickets for Lakme. While the tenor almost looked the role, the soprano was ungodly fat. A French man sitting behind us kept tapping our shoulders, saying that we should have heard Lilly Pons in that role. I had heard her on radio and knew it was her signature role. That was the only time to this day that I have been to the opera.
**One of the most severe forms of Tertiary Syphilis involved the Brain and Spinal Cord. The lumber punctures were to test spinal fluid for presence of infection and in those infected to inject penicillin. In 1945 the Penicillin was only in aqueous form, Bismuth also was effective in treating syphilis. It is a heavy metal in base form but this was in a chemical combination much like the form in Pepto-Bismol. Since it did not dissolve it was injected in the “butt”. It never was absorbed and left a deposit for life that showed up on x-ray. It was amazing how often a “leading citizen” had evidence of Bismuth on lower abdomen x-rays.
