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like the Arthritis Foundation in order to give a base for a national institute, because I knew we could get more federal money by this time than we'd ever raised on a voluntary basis, I thought.

The result of this effort was that we had a lay a medical group interested in pushing work in this field. I went to see Floyd Odlum and asked him if he would support a National Arthritis Institute, and I also Connie Traeger and Freyberg before I got the bill introduced in '49, I think. They said they would support it. I realized that unless I had their support and the support of important people other than ourselves, who were really just interested in arthritis, we couldn't get any proper testimony. Both Traeger and Odlum testified in behalf of the bill, and we--I think I've told you--got an Arthritis and Metabolic Disease Institute and a Neurological Diseases and Blindness Institute passed as part of the Omnibus Research Bill in 1950.

Actually, these doctors were very nervous about anything that had to do with the Federal Government and Odlum had to assure them that this was in no way socialized medicine before they would go down to testify for the bill, which I had gotten introduced in the House and Senate in January '49. One of the people that we got to sponsor the bill in the House was George Smathers, who is now in the Senate, and we asked him simply because he came from Mrs. Mahoney's district in Miami. However, we found that he was extremely agreeable about doing this, and we said, “What makes you so interested in it?” and he said, “My father is totally disabled and has not been out of bed for years because of arthritis.” As a result of the discovery of cortisone, his father got up,