In Cleveland

In Fairview Park Hospital, Cleveland, a Mrs. Sam Smith waited to be delivered of her baby; a Mrs. Harry Conrad Smith waited to be delivered of her baby; and a Mrs. Mathew Smith waited to be delivered of her baby. Each knew not of the others; each trusted in the devices which hospitals use to prevent newborn babies from getting mixed up.

The best approved device is to permit only one obstetrical case into the maternity delivery room at a time. Promptly after delivery a piece of adhesive tape is placed on the child's back, giving its name, date & hour of birth, sex and a lot number. As a further precaution the obstetrical (O.B.) nurse puts a numbered band on the child's wrist and on the mother's wrist another band numbered in duplicate. The method is like that which ornithologists use in bird marking.

Another, and perhaps more common device, is to prepare two strings of beads with the father's full name. If twins or larger multiples are feared, extra strings are made up, with figures 1, 2, 3, 4, added. Then at the time of delivery, and before the umbilical cord is cut, one string is put around the mother's neck, the duplicate (or duplicates) around the baby's (or babies'). Such bead strings cannot slip over the baby's head.

The systems to hospital authorities have seemed foolproof. Babies could be handled efficiently. They could be shuffled around. They could be kept in cribs, if need be, like boxes on a shoe store shelf. And identity would be kept.

In Cleveland's Fairview Park Hospital, Mrs. Sam Smith's time came. Orderlies trundled her to the delivery room. Her own doctor, J. A. W. Reutenik was not there. An interne, P. B. Hisrich, was to help her; and to help him were the hospital's director of obstetrics, Nurse Ruth Meyer, and a student nurse.

A baby was born. Nurse Meyer sang out "Male!" The student aid wrote on a piece of adhesive plaster, "Male, No. 70"; slapped the plaster on the baby's back. In the shake of a dead lamb's tail the baby was on its way to the nursery; in a longer jiffy the mother was trundled towards her hospital bed; and interne and nurses washed their hands, turned around for the next case. Ten minutes later Mrs. Sam Smith's own doctor came, looked at hospital records, genially congratulated Sam Smith on the birth of a boy.

Within 36 hours Mrs. Harry Conrad Smith bore a child and Mrs. Matthew Smith a child. One baby was numbered 69, the other 71. Fairview Park Hospital had three Smith babies--numbered 69, 70, 71. Three mothers nursed their numbered babies and called them sons.

For eight days Mrs. Sam Smith snuggled her newborn child to her, nursed it, found marked resemblances to her husband. On the eighth day she felt her strength returning. She discovered her suckling was a girl. Startled, she complained.

Hospital records showed that before the original "male" of the birth docket had been written an "f-e." Such penciled metamorphosis made Mrs. Sam Smith suspect that she was nursing a changeling. That was not her child, miscalled boy by clerical error. The other Smiths were authentically parents of boys, and were leaving the hospital. But Mrs. Sam Smith would not leave the hospital until she had a boy. Mr. Sam Smith hired a lawyer.

Although, in Ohio, hospitals, being incorporated as charitable in- stitutions, are not liable for damages on account of errors or mis- takes of their employes, the Sam Smith lawyer raised newspaper thunder last week. A county judge, Carl Weygandt, refused the hospital's request to hush up the affair, himself visited the hospital (and Mrs. Sam Smith). He found a nurse, Gretchen Meyer, who had bathed the baby three times during each of the obfuscated days. She "regretted her lack of observation" and said she did not learn the Sam Smith's baby's sex until the dispute broke.

Blood analysts were to be called in, and anthropometrists, finger print experts, palmists, et al.

Exclaimed Judge Weygandt: "This case is unique. More than the lives of the baby and the parents are at stake.

"Their very souls hang in the balance. If the Smiths are forced to accept this girl before they are satisfied that she is theirs, beau- tiful as the baby may be and as much as in time they may come to love her, the baby's life will be damned by an eternal doubt. Hospital officials must come clean in this matter, even if a mistake has been made."

Said Mrs. Sam Smith: "All my other babies have been big and fat. This one is small and thin."

Said Mr. Sam Smith: "I want my wife to have her own baby."