ECONOMICS: Doctor's Dilemma

In the Coolidge era, any government that got in trouble with its currency was likely to call on precise little Princeton Professor Edwin Walter Kemmerer. Known as the "money doctor," he practiced from China to Peru. By 1934 he had treated 13 patients on five continents, not all of whom recovered. Kemmerer's basic prescription: get on the gold standard. Wrote one enthusiastic Chilean editor: "We receive him with palms and olive branches, just as the city of Jerusalem received the Redeemer." Said another: "Dr. Kemmerer is the wisest financier in the world and dances the shimmy on Saturday night."

Last week, at 70, Money Doctor Kemmerer died in Princeton. He had outlived every currency system he ever prescribed.