A new clinic, still woefully short of
volunteer physicians and nurses is operating in the Haight-Ashbury. In barely a
week the word has spread fast and already the clinic is crowded each night with
sick and sometimes frantic youngsters seeking help. It is part of “Happening
House,” a venture designed to offer cultural activities, education, and medical
care to the hippies of the New Community.
Happening House has been founded with the help
of a group of San Francisco State College faculty members, and the cooperation
of leaders in the hippie world. Private donations pay the rent.
The Action
The clinic and Happening House are located in
an old upstairs flat at 558 Clayton street. It once housed a suite of dentists’
offices, and its big old-fashioned windows look out at the action at the corner
of Clayton and Haight. The night-time scene outside is full of sound and
potential violence; a barefoot girl is questioned by police for panhandling;
hunting for sex, three sailors gawk at the hippies; a trio if tribal types walk
by, beads dangling, ankle bells tinkling; one whacks a tambourine and the rhythm
penetrates into the clinic. Dr. David Smith, director of the Alcohol and Drug
Abuse Screening Unit at San Francisco General Hospital, devotes three hours and
more of his own time each night as the volunteer Medical Director of the new
clinic. He can call on eight other volunteer doctors for scheduled service and
ten registered nurses. With 30 patients a day and more coming all the time, he
could use twice as much manpower. With its bilious Victorian green walls and
the sparse furniture, the clinic could be any pad in the Haight-Ashbury. A
radio plays rock music. A coffee pit steams. Kids, the boys mostly bearded,
squat on the floor; many are stoned – turned inward to their private layers of
drug peeled consciousness. The girls look particularly frightened; some are
very young, runaways perhaps; many have come with vaginal infections and fear
far worse. An occasional older alcoholic comes in, cut and bruised. The
volunteer nurses are in street clothes; one almost fainting from overwork, is
barefoot. They are patient, sympathetic, rushed. They keep a medical record on
each patient. It is simple and wholly confidential. One question is only two
words; “Drug history?” Dr. Smith comments: “The surveys talk about the
incidents of drug use among young people – 20 per cent, they say, use marijuana;
5 per cent for LSD. Here the figure is 100 per cent. I haven’t seen a kid in
the clinic who hasn’t used drugs, and most are using them right now. Marijuana,
methedrine, DMT, LSD, and now the new one, STP. We want to tackle the drug
problem here now. Not just help the kids come down from a bad trip, but by
recruiting volunteer psychologists and psychiatrists for a serious aftercare
program that will follow up every patient. We’ll do it if we get the
volunteers.”
Helpers
Bob Conrich, 30, a bespectacled former private
investigator who “dropped out of business to do something constructive” manages
the clinic. He keeps a card file on quiet citizens in the straight world who
are willing to be called at any hour of the night when a youngster needs fast
transport to a hospital. He helps recruit doctors. He keeps book on the
medicine. Conrich wears hippie clothes – the colorful shirt, the necklace -
but his hair is short. He knows the kids: “They’re confused, searching young
people whose immaturity had led them into the drug world,” he says. “They’re
alienated from all the structures of society – from schools and families and
even the world of straight jobs.
Dental Care
He discussed, the other night, a plan to
launch dental services because so many of the clinic patients have such serious
dental problems. Many haven’t seen a toothbrush since they left home. A local
dentist dropped in, committed; he had served in the farm workers’ union clinic
in Delano, now he wants to volunteer here. The dentist and Conrich debate the
best way to scrounge a dental chair and oxygen equipment, and the drills and
tools that will be needed. The clinic is luck because the right kind of
plumbing is already installed, left over from the flat’s more prosperous days as
a private dental office. Conrich rifles through the night’s clinic business: a
boy with cuts and burns; he’s vague about how it happened, but the injuries need
simple treatment. A half dozen serious respiratory infections; they’re common
these cold night. Several severely sore toes – athlete’s foot. Abdominal
rashes, migraine headaches.
VD Cases
There are plenty of VD cases – they are
referred quickly to the city’s venereal disease clinic at 33 Hunt Street. The
worried patients go there willingly because the VD clinic is “cool” – non
punitive, eager only to help. A man, no youngster, comes in overwhelmed by
acute anxiety. He has been on a drug trip for three straight weeks – LSD, weed,
speed, bennies, the works, all at once; he’s malnourished too. Tranquilizers
start his treatment. A girl is worried by a mole on her shoulder that has begun
to change. Dr. Smith phones Children’s Hospital; she’s referred there for a
biopsy. Another is sent to Children’s with an infected uterus, an infected
kidney, malnutrition and serum hepatitis. Still another girl has a bad vaginal
trichomonas infection and possible hepatitis. The drug for trichomonas is
expensive: she’ll panhandle to earn the bread, she says. Conrich says no; he
phones the local hospital, wangles the prescription free. A long haired,
charming girl, smiling shyly, has climbed the dingy stairs to the clinic because
her stubborn cold won’t ease up after a week. She wants something now because
she feels terrible, and plans to hitch hike to New York in the morning. Dr.
Smith examines her with extra care. He asks Bob Conrich: Do we have any
injectable penicillin? There’s only one ampoule in the clinic. Dr. Smith uses
it swiftly, tells Conrich to hustle a volunteer with a car, and calls San
Francisco General Hospital. “The girl doesn’t have a cold,” Dr. Smith says.
“It’s a left lower lobe pneumonia, and it could flare up virulently. If that
child started hitch hiking now she’s collapse. Untreated she could die.”
Needs
The clinic goes on and on, hour after hour.
The kids wait their turns patiently, worried. Dr. Smith won’t be through until
almost midnight. Nor will the nurses. Conrich talk about the urgent needs at
558 Clayton: for doctors’ drug samples, for dental equipment, above all for
more volunteer physicians and nurses. The clinic phone number is 431-1714; it
operates for emergencies and phone consultations 24 hours a day, seven days a
week. Medical clinic hours are 8pm on, seven nights a week. A young boy
interrupts: He’s been hallucinating for almost three days now, and it’s a bad
trip. Conrich calms him. Dr. Smith will help him soon. The boy wanders through
the clinic rooms.
Cool
“I can’t afford to get busted,” the boy says
softly. “Look man,” says Conrich. “I’m cool. Don’t worry” “But what about
the doc?” asks the boy. “He’s the coolest man that ever wore a tie,” Conrich
says. “Look, don’t you understand, if we weren’t cool here nobody would come!
We’re here to take care of people, not get them busted.” The boy quiets down,
smiles and sits. “Groovy,” he says. The clinic’s address: 558 Clayton Street,
corner of Haight. The phone: 431-1714
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