Medicine: Congress's Doctor

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That compromise, however, has not yet been brought back for a vote, because the potent Navy lobby is bitterly opposing the jumping of Commander Calver over his seagoing seniors. Washington private practitioners resent Dr. Calver's free treatment to Congressional secretaries, wives, families, visitors. However, he gives non-members only emergency treatments. Regular patients are primarily Senators and Representatives (Vice President Garner is an assiduous client) and a few of their former colleagues, like onetime Vice President Charles Curtis. A stronger hindrance developed last week. John Raymond McCarl, comptroller-general, let it be known that Congress could promote Dr. Calver to anything it liked, but that he would not pay him one cent more than he gets now. The hindrance apparently is not insurmountable. Congressmen recalled that President Wilson made Commander Gary Travers Grayson a rear-admiral, that President Harding made Dr. Charles E. Sawyer a brigadier-general, that President Coolidge made Major James Francis Coupal a colonel, that President Hoover made Lieut.-Commander Joel Thompson Boone a commander. If Presidents can have their personal physicians promoted over seniors in service, Representatives and Senators saw no reason why they could not do likewise with Dr. George Wehnes Calver.

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