Doctors' Verdict

Down the ramp of a Military Air Transport Service Super Constellation at Washington National Airport one morning last week came the familiar figure--a big man, shoulders somewhat hunched, black Homburg squarely planted, a briefcase in hand, blue eyes sober behind rimmed bifocals. After a six-day trip to London, Paris and Bonn, John Foster Dulles was home once again. His mileage to date in his service since Jan. 21, 1953 as U.S. Secretary of State: 559,988 miles, the equivalent of 22 times around the world, or to the moon and back.

But this time, as the Secretary greeted his aides and settled back into his Cadillac for the ride to Washington, the routine began to break pattern. Dulles confided that he had been suffering about a month from a hernia, that it had pained him continually during his European trip, and that he was going to see his doctors that morning. Dulles, who will be 71 next week, did not need to add details of his recent health record: surgical removal in Nov. 1956 of a large cancerous lesion of the colon, a sharp attack of diverticulitis last December.

Low Battery. The Cadillac dropped him off at his Norman-style home at 2740 32nd Street N.W. There he rested while waiting for his doctors. The key men: Walter Reed Army Hospital's Major General Leonard D. Heaton, the President's surgeon, and Dr. A. D. Daughton, Dulles' own personal physician of eight years. Their recommendation: surgery.

Dulles consented, notified President Eisenhower, went down to the State Department later to keep longstanding appointments with visiting Austrian Vice Chancellor Bruno Pittermann and West Berlin's Mayor Willy Brandt. He phoned Under Secretary of State Christian Herter, then vacationing in South Carolina, gave him the news of the doctors' verdict, told him there was no need to hurry home. Remarked Dulles to a friend, as he headed off for an appointment at the White House: "When your battery runs down, you just can't operate. You've got to get it recharged."

In the White House the President quickly approved a letter from Dulles that 1) announced plans to go into Walter Reed Army Hospital next day, 2) requested a temporary leave of absence, 3) turned the State Department over to Chris Herter and in Herter's absence to Under Secretary for Economic Affairs C. Douglas Dillon, 4) reserved control of the German crisis policy for himself so as to avoid any new uncertainty about the U.S. position. Foster Dulles' friends smiled as they translated the letter to mean: "Don't touch anything until I get back." He would expect, Dulles told Eisenhower, "to resume fully the duties of the office." Time out: probably six to eight weeks.

Sense of Unease. Next morning at 9:30, Dulles and wife Janet headed in his Cadillac (JD-25) to Walter Reed Hospital. Luggage: two overnight suitcases, a pile of about a dozen mystery books, the inevitable briefcase. General Heaton installed Dulles in the presidential suite, told reporters flatly that Dulles was "worn out." Decision: delay operating for three days to give the Secretary's colon inflammation time to subside, give him some rest before the ordeal.

Dulles went to bed easily. He ate soft foods, slept deeply for the first time in weeks, read a couple of Ellery Queen mysteries plus the New York Times, Washington Post, Baltimore Sun, and a new book by Harry and Bonaro Overstreet, What We Must Know About Communism (Norton; $3.95). Once or twice he phoned the office for a check on things. In the State Department one day, while Dillon was presiding over a morning conference, a secretary sent in a United Press International dispatch:

THERE HAS NEVER BEEN ANY QUESTION WHO WAS THE BOSS AT THE STATE DEPARTMENT AND THERE STILL ISN'T. HIS POWERFUL PERSONALITY STILL HOVERS OVER HIS SUBORDINATES. The conference room burst into loud and warm guffaws. But as the days, hours, minutes ticked by, a sense of unease--undimmed by Presidential Press Secretary James C. Hagerty's reassurances--began to spread through the nation and the world.

The Nodular Implant. A few minutes before 8 o'clock Friday morning Dulles was wheeled into an operating room, put under anesthetic. Surgeon Heaton cut a small incision in the patient's groin to get at the hernia, kept his eye peeled for a sign of recurrence of the cancer. On the hernia sac he found a suspicious-looking nodular implant. He noticed, too, that a small amount of abdominal fluid was released after the sac was cut away. By Walter Reed's high-speed pneumatic tubes he shot the tissue and the fluid to the laboratory for a routine examination. The verdict: tissue malignant, an adenocarcinoma. Further note: cancer cells were found floating in the abdominal fluid.

Heaton finished the operation, stitched up the incision, delayed publication of the biopsy report overnight. The Secretary's immediate post-operative condition, he stated, "is quite satisfactory."

The Old Friend. Overnight, the nation's and world's fears mounted steadily. Why the delay in a report routinely quick in every up-to-date operating room? By Saturday morning the Walter Reed lab had made its final check. Heaton told Mrs. Dulles first. Then he told Dulles. Shortly before 9 a.m. the final word was passed to the President.

In little more than an hour the President was at Dulles' bedside. For 25 minutes they talked. Ike told Dulles that he was counting on him to get back to work. Dulles gave the President the book at his bedside--What We Must Know About Communism--urged him to read it. At conversation's end the President tucked the book under his arm, stopped on his way out of the hospital to make a short statement: "... I express the thoughts and prayers of all of us that the results of his operation and the further course of treatment will be successful."

After the President had gone, Dulles relaxed in his bed--blood pressure 125 over 70, temperature normal, pulse 70. Scheduled to begin this week: radiation therapy, the only treatment advisable for the serious condition of free-floating cancer cells. From Dulles' sister, Eleanor Lansing Dulles, a State Department Germany expert, came the closest approach to the truth that is possible in such a situation: "It is grave. There is no question about it. But Foster has more than the normal power of selfdiscipline, and in his case it isn't wise to go on averages."

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