CABLE FROM LONDON REPORTS ARRIVAL OF HOSPITAL HEADS

Word has been received by the University via trans-Atlantic cable of the safe arrival of Doctors John E. Gordon and Paul B. Beeson in London. These doctors from the Medical School are making final arrangements with the British Ministry of Health for the establishment of an American Red Cross-Harvard Hospital to study communicable disease under wartime conditions.

No announcement of their passage had been previously issued in fear of possible danger on route. The journey was originally scheduled for the first of December, but because of the difficulty of obtaining transporation it was delayed.

Next month "somewhere in southeast England" 75 American doctors, Red Cross nurses, and laboratory technicians will set up the 22-building hospital containing 126 beds. They will make an extensive laboratory and field study of communicable diseases and report their findings to the U. S. Army, Navy, and Public Health Service.

Gordon Directs Hospital

Doctor Gordon, who is professor of Preventive Medicine and Epidemiology at the Medical School, is director of the undertaking, and Dr. Beeson, who is Assistant in Medicine at the Medical School, is Chief Physician of the unit.

Bruce D. Smith, who will leave for England later this month, represents the American Red Cross. The Red Cross, under Superintendent Gerald F. Houser, assistant director of the Massachusetts General Hospital, will be responsible for the management of the unit. Dr. Gordon will be responsible and report to Harvard on scientific and clinical phases of the hospital work in addition to the laboratory and field work.

Before leaving the United States, Doctor Gordon said in a statement just released, "One of the chief advantages of an American Unit--as pointed out by several of the English authorities--is that a nation under the terrible immediate pressure of modern warfare finds great difficulty in doing more than carrying on the war from day to day, and an outside group, coming in with a primary responsibility to observe and develop, has potentialties for making great contributions."

"Site...Is Ideal"

"The site selected for the hospital," Doctor Gordon declared, "is ideal for the purposes of the unit. . . . It is in an area occupied by many civilian refugees, transferred from cities and military districts and is near enough to assemblages of troops to watch the interrelation of civilian and military concentrations in close vicinity to each other in accentuating disease."

The hospital, which is being built in this country, will be constructed of prefabricated sections of five-ply building board sandwiched between fire-resistant sheets. They will be bolted in a structural steel framework and camouflaged to match the surrounding terrain.

At the end of each building there will be a vestibule arrangement to allow doctors and nurses to enter and leave without light escaping. Windows will consist of three parts: heavy-duty plate glass reenforced with wire mesh, screen, and blackout shutter.

Ventilation experts have devised a system to circulate fresh air into the rooms during the nightly "lock-up" for blackouts. Light-proof louvres will be installed in each blackout shutter.

Air raid shelters, dug deep into the chalk strata at the site, will be an added safety feature. The entire hospital has been designed to minimize dangers of flying glass and other air raid hazards.