Polite Dissent

The Dr. Kildare comic was published by Dell sporadically from 1962 to 1965. It was based on the television series starring Richard Chamberlain as Dr. James Kildare, an Internal Medicine resident at Blair General Hospital. Dr. Kildare #7 has a 12¢ cover price, and is dated Sept-Nov 1963. It has a photo-cover of star “Dick” Chamberlain and is titled “Emergency, Dr. Kildare…The Shipyards are Engulfed in Flame!” It offers 32 pages of four-color excitement, with the only ads being on the back cover.

The medicine in the story is quite accurate. The opening scenes do a good job showing how different state-of-the-art medical care was forty years ago. The writing is good, but the story tends to be overdramatic in parts, with Dr. Kildare always being in the middle of the action, even the firefighting sequences. The art is above average, with the main characters always looking like their television counterparts. The color choices are a little off, with Kildare’s hair always a bright blond, despite the fact that the photo-cover shows him to have brown hair. Additionally, his scrubs always stay a bleached white, despite running around burning buildings filled with ash and smoke.

The main story is a 27-page story titled “Trial By Fire“. In the opening scene, Dr. Kildare examines a man who fell off a building and injured his head, ribs and leg. A depressed skull fracture is seen on the x-ray, which suggests that their may be some brain damage as well. To determine whether there is any bleeding around the brain, a lumbar puncture (spinal tap) is performed. The spinal fluid shows blood, so an intracranial operation is performed to stop the bleeding in the skull.

Today, we don’t rely on skull x-rays and spinal taps to determine brain injuries. CT scans of the head (which were not available in 1963) show brain damage and any bleeding. Utilizing special medications and tiny clips, many intracranial bleeds are able to be stopped without invasive operations.

Next, Dr. Kildare is called to the waterfront, where a tanker boat and some buildings are on fire. Impetuously, Kildare rushes into a burning apartment with the firemen to save a girl and her father. They are able to rescue the girl, but her father has passed away. “The father was dead before we left the room,” laments Kildare. “Heart failure.” This is a bold call – not that the patient is dead, I assume he would be able to recognize that, but that he is able to determine the patient died of “heart failure” after only a cursory exam.

Next, Kildare joins several firemen as they cross a boom and spray down the burning tanker with water. One of the firemen falls off the boom, but Kildare treats his wounds successfully. Tired, he returns to the hospital only to hear that the tanker fire has flared up again with some of the firefighters trapped inside. Returning to the waterfront, Kildare dons an asbestos suit (this was before asbestosis was recognized as a disease) and goes inside the burning tanker. A firefighter is pinned by a metal beam that has fallen, crushing his hand. Ultimately, Kildare has to amputate the fireman’s two crushed fingers. Kildare returns to the hospital more desperate than ever for a vacation.

The comic contains more than just the Dr. Kildare story. The inside cover contains two brief “Little Medics” vignettes showcasing children and first aid. The first strip has two Boy Scouts hiking when one is bitten by a rattlesnake. The other scout places a tourniquet on the wounded limb, cuts a cross over the bite, and squeezes out the venom. Next, he runs to the nearest house and calls the zoo, as they are most likely to have “anti-venom serum”.

This treatment, or the more commonly taught treatment of sucking the poison out of a snake bite, was the recommended first aid treatment for many years. I suspect this was only because no reliable authority actually looked at what the Boy Scouts and other outdoorsmen were teaching. Over the past several years the recommendations have changed. The tourniquet is appropriate, but cutting, squeezing, or sucking the wound are all counterproductive. Intricate field treatment is not necessary; simply get the injured person to the ER as soon as possible. In the early 1960s, our modern emergency room system was not in place, so zoos were the most likely places to carry antivenin.

The second Little Medic vignette deals with a boy who breaks his leg while biking. His sister makes a splint for him out of available materials. Good advice both then and now.

There is a text feature, Lady Doctor, about Sally, a young woman who wants to be a doctor. There is a small amount of sex bias in the story, but overall it is a well written story that would be encouraging to any young woman desiring to become a physician.

The last story is “Jungle Doctor: Dangerous Waters”, about a doctor and his assistant deep in the heart of Africa. It is more of an adventure tale than a medical strip. The story is formulaic, and you wonder why African natives are screaming for help in English. It also ends abruptly, as if the artist suddenly realized he was on the last panel.

The medicine shown in the Dr. Kildare #7 is all well researched and accurate for the era. We treat head trauma and snake bites differently today, but the illustrated treatments were state-of-the-art in 1963.