The Constant Invader, Rehabilitation, Program No. 6

On this episode of The Constant Invader, fourteen-year-old Mary Hart is in the hospital, suffering from Tuberculosis. She refuses medical attention admitting that she is afraid of male doctors and all men in general. Influenced by her mother, Mary has a deep rooted anxiety towards her father, whom she thinks abandoned her.

A medical social worker convinces Mary's mother to let her father visit. It is revealed that her mother had blocked her father from visiting. She learns how to trust her estranged father and her doctors to recover, "I don't know too much about rehabilitation, but it seems to me, I had to be rehabilitated as a person before I could be cured of my Tuberculosis."

The narrator, Vincent Price, comments on the importance of a healthy psyche in recovering from illness, "...those who have had TB must be given personal, social and vocational help to bring them back to living. The kind of positive independent living that is the right of every American."

Audio courtesy of the NYC Municipal Archives WNYC Collection

WNYC archives id: 150776
Municipal archives id: LT4598