Medicine: A, B, C, D.

Into St. Mary's Hospital in Passaic, N. J. one night last week hurried Mrs. Emil Kasper, 36, in labor five weeks before her time. Dr. Frank Frederic Jani, who had told the woman she would probably have twins, put her under an anesthetic, worked over her for two and a half hours. When, upon waking. Mrs. Kasper was informed she had given birth to three boys and a girl, each weighing about three pounds, she burst into tears. Dr. Jani popped two of the quadruplets into incubators, sent out for two more, ordered that the infants be fed glucose water and two drops of good rye whiskey every two hours. Said he later: ''There was great excitement. . . . There was almost a panic." The newcomers were provisionally named A, B, C, D.

Father of the quadruplets, a German-born carpenter who two weeks ago had obtained a $20-a-week railroad shop job after 18 months' unemployment, was far from pleased to learn that the number of his offspring had risen from two to six overnight. Sourly he observed: "That's big news." Then he went back to work, angry because he was an hour late.

Transferred to a private room as the delighted hospital's guest, Mrs. Kasper remained unhappy. Mindful of the publicity windfall which the Dionne quintuplets brought to Callander, Ontario, the mayor of Passaic begged the Governor of New Jersey for State money to keep the Kasper quadruplets alive. A news photographer paid Father Kasper $750 for permission to photograph the infants. Cried the mayor to the father: "Don't sign anything, even if it's good, until the legal staff of Passaic has looked it over."

According to the inexplicable "Rule of 87'' which seems to determine the ratio between single and multiple human births, approximately one pair of twins occurs to every 87 singles; one set of triplets to about 7,569 (87 squared) singles. The chance which brought quadruplets to the Raspers was thus one in 658,503 (87 cubed). The Dionne quintuplets, who last week were awaiting a visit from the Keys quadruplets of Hollis, Okla. (see p. 38), are, according to this rule, unique among 57,000,000 humans.