Medicine: Danger in the Hospital

The scene in the operating theater of Boston's Peter Bent Brigham Hospital was typical of the best in U.S. medicine. Carefully scrubbed surgeons and nurses in sterile caps, masks, gowns and gloves glided around the table with smooth efficiency. The senior scrub nurse knew the senior surgeon's methods so well that he rarely had to ask for an instrument. A laconic New Englander, he uttered hardly a word. One thing that set this operation apart: in the theater, also sterile-garbed, was Microbiologist Ruth B. Kundsin, who took air samples every few minutes to...

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