Philadelphia Flayed

When Philadelphia's hard-bitten Mayor Samuel Davis Wilson was prevented from spending $70,000,000 for a nitration plant, he angrily called the city's drinking water "filtered filth!" But when Dr. Haven Emerson, lanky, zealous Manhattan authority on public health, swooped into Philadelphia last week and whooped: "The water supply here is worse than that of any other large city in the country," then Mayor Wilson, just out of sickbed, roared: "Sniping!"

But Zealot Emerson, whom the Philadelphia County League of Women Voters had summoned for help, had a piece to speak, and he spoke it. One of his pointed paragraphs was directed at Health Director William Cosgrove Hunsicker, 65, homeopath, genitourinary surgeon, onetime State senator: "The present incumbent's qualifications would not permit him to be appointed to any full-time position in any city or rural community in New York State, nor would he meet the requirements of district health officer of New York City, responsible for a city neighborhood of only 2,000 or 3,000 population."

Spluttered Dr. Hunsicker: "Who is Dr. Emerson? . . . Unfounded charges. . . . Our drinking water is absolutely safe. At times it doesn't taste good. But there is no danger in drinking it."

Dr. Emerson went right ahead on the subject of Philadelphia's administration of public health: "Perhaps it will take an epidemic, some dramatic expression of illness, if any such is really heeded, to reveal the true neglect of those measures of prevention found desirable in other large cities of the U. S."

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