NEW YORK IN THE SEVENTIES—ST. VINCENT’S HOSPITAL.

NEW YORK IN THE SEVENTIES—ST. VINCENT’S HOSPITAL. Kids, you may read a lot of stories about New York City in the seventies, but we took for granted things that seem a little unusual when looking back from the suburbs. One day in the seventies, Mary Jane broke her ankle. She wound up at the emergency room of St. Vincent’s. Although the staff was very nice to her, she wound up waiting for a great many hours. The other people waiting assured her that this was because there were an unusual number of O.D. cases that deserved priority. Another time, Mary Jane woke up with great pain in her arm. (It later turned out to be from a pinched nerve in her neck, probably from carrying too heavy a grocery bag the day before. Back in the day, we carried groceries home or used a small shopping cart.) At the St. Vincent’s emergency room, the doctor began by asking Mary Jane how the pain in her arm began. She said she didn’t know. The doctor’s next question was: “What were you on?”