WRONG NUMBER COMEDY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22259, 11 May 1934, Page 4

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 24-hours' uninterrupted service of specialists, trained nurses, and special appliances. It has been doing so for the last 11 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. Shercshefsky. an engineer, whose number it is, and his family Lave been reduced almost to nervous

wrecks by the all-night ringing of that telephone bell. He protested repeatedly, and even offered to have the bills reprinted at his own cost. But to do effect.

When he again visited the Medical Centre to threaten legal proceedings, ho found a young nurse in the act of making out an order for more handbills. She again wrote in the wrong number. 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 fof urgent medical aid.