Medicine: Freely Give

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Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers . . . freely ye have received, freely give.

—Matthew 10:8

Not many modern doctors nowadays have the chance or inclination to take this biblical injunction literally. But young (30) Dr. Gordon C. McNeilly did. In private practice at Santa Rosa, Calif, after a Navy internship and a hospital residency, he had decided that he was not doing all that he might to "freely give."

The deeply religious son of a Presbyterian minister, Dr. McNeilly saw his chance when the Navy announced that the post of officer-in-charge would soon be open at one of the world's newest and most remote leper colonies, on the flat, tiny Pacific island of Tinian, once a B-29 base. Dr. McNeilly asked for the job and got it.

Last week, Lieut, (j.g.) McNeilly was at the U.S. Marine Hospital at Carville, La., boning up on the most modern sulfone treatment for what victims prefer to call Hansen's disease (TIME, Dec. 30, 1946). Next he will spend a month at Hawaii's leprosarium on Molokai Island. On May 1 he will go to Tinian with his wife, who is a registered nurse, and their two small daughters.

To Tinian, 32 square miles in the Marianas, polyglot leper patients may come from any of the thousands of islands scattered over the watery 3,000,000 sq. mi. of the Trust Territory (former Japanese mandate). Dr. McNeilly will have a warrant officer, four corpsmen, three native nurses and two native aids to help him.