Word: shockingly
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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According to Dr. Carl Waldemar Walter of Boston's famed Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, there are 1,200 "electrocutions"-deaths by electrical shock -in U.S. hospitals every year. Though the statement has provoked incredulity (a spokesman for the American Medical Association insists that it is "exaggerated by about 1,175 cases"), Walter stands by it. "I don't think it's an unrealistic figure," he said last week, "since we have about 7,000 hospitals and 30 million hospitalized patients a year." The figure would be far greater, he notes, if it included patients who suffer cardiac...
...stop a patient's heart. Perhaps more dangerous in the long run are the heating pads, blankets, bed controls and reading lamps that everyone takes for granted. If current from any of these ungrounded appliances reaches a patient's body, he may suffer burns or electric shock. Even when the supposedly safe three-prong plug with a ground wire is used, there is still a danger. Because the equipment is plugged in and out so often, usually by undertrained aides who understand nothing about electricity, the ground wire may break inside the cable or the plug...
...Borg-Warner Corp. is using a heavy-duty plug with a detachable head that may be open for inspection. Borg-Warner has also introduced a low-voltage hand control for the patient's tip-up bed; even if there should be a leakage of current, the resulting shock would be only 16 volts, not enough to be harmful even to a very sick...
...certain. "The habit of frivolity is tyrannical, wants to make a joke of everything. With McCarthy . . . when it lapsed, a very deep melancholy seemed to take over." In the end, claims Sheed, McCarthy "underestimated himself sinfully. And he was, I believe, after the first shock, delighted to be free of his role, to escape from his Secret Service man and return to that niche a little below...
...often happens these days, the first step toward reform has turned out to be the shock of failure. Last summer planes were stacked up for hours every day over the "Golden Triangle" airports bounded by New York, Washington and Chicago. Every separate aviation group (each served by its own persuasive lobby in Washington) had its favorite scapegoat. Private pilots blamed the airlines for overscheduling. Airline pilots blamed private aviation for taking up scarce runway space. The air-traffic controllers blamed FAA for not providing enough trained men or electronic equipment. FAA sighed and passed the blame along to Congress...