Ills of the Maximum Leader

What ails Fidel Castro? The diagnosis so far, according to word passed along by one of Castro's consulting physicians, is that Cuba's Premier has a complex of ills of the lower alimentary canal, including hemorrhoids, diverticulitis of the colon and an abscess with fistula.

Diverticulitis results when waste matter becomes fixed in small, hernia-like outward bulges of the intestinal wall that sometimes develop where blood vessels enter. Bacteria multiply in the waste, and the intestinal wall becomes inflamed and infected. Untreated, the infection may rupture and form an abscess outside the wall of the colon. A fistula is an abnormal passage that burrows into another organ or to the outside of the body. Symptoms in severe cases of diverticulitis:* nausea, vomiting, pain, constipation or diarrhea, chills and fever. Possible treatments: antibiotics, special diet, surgery.

Castro's aides are apparently going on the theory that it would be unseemly for the Maximum Leader to admit susceptibility to such unmentionable ailments. When he failed to show up at a rally a month ago, they summed up his ailment as "only a touch of pneumonia in the left lung." That evening Castro put on an army jacket and sat up in bed to reassure a TV audience that his doctors had merely ordered him to rest. A fortnight ago he stood in the rain to address a rally in Cuba's eastern mountains, remarked hoarsely that he still was not well, and vanished again. This time his doctors announced cryptically that he needed not only physical rest but complete mental rest as well. Castro was moved to secret seclusion.

As an intimate friend of Castro explains it, the recommendation of mental rest stems from Castro's current mood. Castro, says the friend, has entered a period of mysticism, and is eager to withdraw from the day-to-day world of misunderstanding, defecting friends and tedious government. He wants to retreat into the hills to write poetry (he has tried his hand at it and does well) and meditate. "I am leader of an American revolution." Castro told his friend recently, "not chief of a small country's government." But the mood is plainly related to his physical ills, and does not preclude a vigorous return to power when he feels better.

*Similar to some symptoms of colon cancer.

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