Less Exam Dodging Tried By Healthier Harvard Men

Not only are there fewer psuedo-sick midyear dodgers this year, but Harvard is generally healthier than at any time since 1935, according to Dr. Arlie V. Bock, Oliver Professor of Hygiene.

Each year a large number of hopeful and sly students slink into the Hygiene Building on Holyoke Street with requests to be excused from exams because of various serious diseases. In the past such students have not received much help from the Department, which has been rather successful in separating the real sicknesses from the assumed.

This year, for reasons which the Department has not been able to determine, the number of attempts has been smaller. Members of the staff felt that one possibility was an increased feeling of responsibility because of the war. With a definite purpose in coming to college, students may feel that exams are not made merely to be skipped.

Harvard Healthier

Along with the drop in midyearitis is the drop in Harvard sickness as a whole. A comparison of the total number of visits to the Department clinics for the first three months of 1940 and 1941 shows this trend. In September, October, and November of 1940, there were 1011 more patients at the clinics than in the corresponding months of this year.

Dr. Bock doesn't know how to explain the very definite improvement in Harvard health. Since 1935 each year has seen a sad increase in the medical requirements of students. Dr. Bock said that as early as last spring he "had a hunch" that there would be less patients this year. Evidently some sort of cycle is at work, and Harvard is on the upswing at the moment. If the United States as a whole is at the same stage, it would seem that Japan chose a singularly inauspicious moment for her attack.

War Effort An Explanation

The war furnishes a possible explanation for this question as well as the exam dodgers. Dr. Bock suggests. It has been the experience of doctors in England that the excitement of a war as well as the feeling of a large common objective, has taken people's minds from their own ailments. In fact the group in England which has had the most complaints is the army, waiting in boring expectancy to defend Britain from German invasion.

"Bluebook blues" is not only a fake malady. Exams only intensify what Dr. Bock believes are the ever-present problems of the undergraduate. "Year after year we try to explain, but they don't listen to us," he said. They stay up all night, feeding on coffee, coca-cola, caffein tablets, and benzedrine sulfate." If students would go to bed around 11 o'clock instead of cramming. Dr. Bock feels that they would do better on the exams next morning.

In Corpore Sano

Especially during midyears, Dr. Bock said, daily exercise is extremely important, "One hour a day of good fast exercise will help a great deal to keep a boy fit for his exams."

The doctor wasn't very hopeful about undergraduates' taking his advice, however, "I've about decided they just learn by experience," he lamented. "They don't believe a word I say."