WRONG NUMBER COMEDY

Evening Star, Issue 21716, 10 May 1934, Page 12

WRONG NUMBER COMEDY

MUDDLE IN MOSCOW FAMILY NEARLY DISTRACTED. The value of Russian medical science may be high, but in practice it is often embarrassed by the primitive and incompetent environment in which it works (says the Moscow correspondent of the ‘ Daily Telegraph ’). Moscow’s “ Urgent MedicaL Aid Centre ’’ advertises a twenty-four hours’ uninterrupted service of specialists, trained nurses, and special appliances. It lias been doing so for the last eleven weeks, but with the wrong telephone number on the advertisements. Misled by handbills, 530,000 of which had been placed in the city’s telephone call boxes, thousands of persons hastily seeking a doctor have wasted precious minutes in ringing up this wrong number. Meanwhile M. Shereshefsky, an engineer, whoso number it is, and his family have been reduced almost to nervous wrecks by the all-night ringing of the telephone bell. He protested- repeatedly, and even offered to have the bills reprinted at his own cost. But to no effect. When he again visited the Medical Centre to threaten legal proceedings he found a young nurse in the act of making out an order for more handbills. She again wrote in the wrong rilimber. When the correspondent later inspected several telephone boxes he found plenty of the handbills still inviting the public to ring up M. Shereshefsky’s number for urgent medical aid.