Keen Flayed

William Williams Keen, witty, venerable Philadelphia surgeon, lately underwent a minor operation. Afterwards he received a scolding letter: "Why didn't you have the operation without an anesthetic, so you could see how the animals feel that you have tortured all these years? You will have an awful body in the next incarnation. . . . You have one foot in the grave now and the other foot on a banana peel, you old fiend." Remarked Surgeon Keen: "I take it that the letter is from a woman. If so I pity her possible husband. The fun of the thing is that I never have been a research worker. I have never experimented on any animal, not even a mouse or a frog. I shall keep my eye on that banana peel, you may be sure." Last January Surgeon Keen was 92.