Medics Warn of Possible Sterility As Mumps Come to College, Annex

Medical authorities waited apprehensively today for the first sterility case among the 14 University and Radcliffe students stricken with mumps.

Doctors and infirmary heads agree only that mumps definitely do in certain cases cause sterility.

Radcliffe hastened to deny that sterilization affected females at all. "It only occurs in certain adolescent males. Females are never subject to sterility from mumps," the infirmary asserted. But Robert H. Hamlin, instructor in legal medicine, says sterilization occurs in post-adolescents, not adolescents, and adds that females can be affected as well as males. He did admit that chances of sterility are much greater among men.

Danger to Women as High

Arlie V. Bock, Henry K. Oliver Professor of Hygiene, agrees with Hamlin that only post-adolescents are affected with impotency and sterilization, but says females are affected just as much as males.

In the meantime, seven cases of mumps are confined to Stillman's infectious disease ward, while Radcliffe has sent as many into Boston hospitals.