Document zz95YKRLn8799oJovLQ4OpgJa

/ . CABLEGRAMS'. l p o r t ;l o n o o n . telegrams: ETHYLPORT, SOWEST. VV i t< J Telephone: VI CTORI A I4 ETHYL EX PORT CORPORATION I n c o r p o r a t e d i n t h e St at e o f De l a w a r e . U . S. A . w i t h l i m i t e d l i ab i l i t y. THAMES HOUSE,MILLBNK LONDON, S.W.I HeadOffice: 135 EAST 4Z<9 STREET NEW YORK, U.S.A 28th December, 1956. Dr. R. A. Kehoe, College of Medicine, University of Cincinnati, Cincannati, OHIO. Dear Dr. Kehoe, I have studied your letter and the enclosures of December 3rd very carefully and have also discussed the contents with Dr. Boldero. Taking this country first. The situation would seem to me to be quite clear. Dr. Boldero does not feel at the moment that it is necessary for him to take on an assistant. Vie cannot at present forecast what the extra work is going to be, since this will depend entirely on the number of additional plants which are to be built, primarily for use by the Government. Dr. Boldero tells me that at present his time is pretty well taken up due to the fact that he is still Dean of Middlesex Hospital. When his term of . office expires, however, probably in another two years time, he will have a great . deal more spare time, and will be able to do additional work for us if necessary. We have decided, therefore, between us that the best thing to do is to leave things as they are, until we have some more definite information as to the number of additional plants to be built and the amount of work this will entail. Dr. Boldero felt that it might be advisable to continue retaining, for' a short period of time, the services of Gordon, in case this extra work developed in the near future to an extent when he was unable to take care of it. After a further discussion, however, we agreed that it would hardly be worthwhile paying Gordon a retainer, and we both felt that it would be better to cancel our present arrangement with him and come to some other agreement should the necessity arise for making active use of his services. 0007124 N7792 TO. Di*. ~- . . R. .' ; A. ; Kehoe 2 dat e December., .1956.... :'Vv -Vv :'r. v: VV- -,A;y-:;v, 'Y-KV::?-:. ,*:" . : * `.'ri,,. After talking things over with Boldero I had a word with Gordon, and we agreed that our present arrangement with him should cease as from 50th June 1957, This of course is entirely agreeable to him and I hope will meet with your approval. I understand from Dodds whom I see quite frequently that he is entirely satisfied with the progress of the work he is doing and I believe he ..keeps in con stant touch with you. - ; . Boldero has promised to keep in closer touch with you and also with Holmes and Morris in Ireland. Boldero seems entirely satisfied with the situation here and I think that he feels everything is being taken care of quite adequately. Fr a n c e . V--;VV' Dr. Coste as far as we are able to judge would appear to be carrying out his routine work quite well. We are not familiar with his facilities for taking care of the analytical side, but I understand that you have written him on this, and he has expressed a desire to visit this country and spend some little time with Dodds. I have told him that this is something he must fix up with you and when it is arranged you will undoubtedly get in touch with us or Dodds direct. I think Coste*s work, now that the political side has disappeared, is greatly improved. You will remember that we were not very impressed with him during our meetings with Bordas and others. I do not suppose that his knowledge of the subject has increased considerably, but from the reports he forwards us, his routine work seems to be carried out quite regularly. With what skill, however, I am unable to judge. GERMANY. : I think it would be a very good idea if we couild get Spelthan to undertake the medical supervision of all the plants in Germary. This, however, we shall have to discuss on behalf of ETHIL G.m.b.H. with I.G., and since I shall probably be visiting Germany in the course of the next few weeks I propose leaving it over until I have the opportunity of discussing it personally with Muller-Cunradi. I cannot say off hand what difficulties will be involved, but I should not think they would be serious ones. ITALY. T h e 'situation is still quite indefinite. Tie have not made ary progress in our negotiations with Montecatini, but as far as I can judge there is little poss ibility of our continuing to be allowed to import, once facilities can be made available in Italy for local production. I entirely agree with you that our present medical arrangements in Italy are entirely unsatisfactory, and I should be only too delighted to see them changed immediately if possible. I have always considered, and my views have not changed,.;, that our present medical consultants in Italy are apt to do us more harm than good. ' ;v"' Professor Preti is, I think the obvious man to take over our work in Italy, r\ r* UutH & / T O Dr. R. A. Kehoe '- 3 d a t k .28th December,.1956. provided we can obtain his services at a reasonable fee. The demands, however, he made during our last discussion were in my opinion entirely unreasonable. It would in all probability be considerably easier for you to discuss this matter with him since undoubtedly you could give him a much clearer idea of the type of work involved, the responsibilities you wish him to take together with the amount of time likely to be involved etc. I still feel, that it is essential to make some change in Italy, but I am rather doubtful whether it is worthwhile bothering to do so until we have the situation with Montecatini clarified. The'present situation is definitely unsatisfactory, *' - j ' . - . '.. : 'V I am entirely in agreement with your views that all our medical consultants in every country should be in direct contact with yourself and under your supervision and control. It is quite impossible for us to form any accurate assesment of the quality of any of our consultants and we have to rely entirely on the advice given us by the local oil companies. Some of the men we have are definitely first class, others certainly could not be classified on this basis. I feel, however, that no one can judge this other than yourself or one of your assistants, and unless they are personally vetted^and approved by you, we cannot be certain that they are scientificaty competent to carry out their work. In such cases, however, where our medical con sultants have not been seen by yourself it is of course necessary for us to accept the situation as it stands. I would welcome some closer supervision on your part, and would be only too glad to have you approve each consultant we take on anu make it clear to them that their appointment is entirely in your hands and all matters concerning their work under your control. ... Mr. Tegner has written you.about his trip to the East. As you know it was originally intended that China and Japan should be under the supervision of the States, and to the best of my knowledge Japan is .ill being handled by our New York office. I understand a certain amount of mixing also takes place in Manila. We have not, up to the present time, had ary connection with this territory. Tegner was far from satisfied with the situation as he saw it with some of the companies in China, and it would appear that some plants do not meet our specifications and in one instance at least, medical control was non-existant. This I think he has straightened out fairly well but further visits will be necessary in the not too distant future. . . I have talked over with Mr. Tegner and Mr. Noble the question of our Australian people inspecting from time to time some of the plants in the far East and provided they are agreeable we could make use of them to a cert&in extent. It will still be necessary to send someone from this office, on the average of once a year, to certain points in the East and of course once they have gone as far as Rangoon it is just as easy for them to carry on throughout the whole of the East, as it would be to send anyone up from Australia. I think, however, it would be a good idea for someone from our Australian office to visit our plants in China during the coming Spring. I will, however, write you separately on this at a later date. The plants at Balik Papan, Palembang and Signapore are, as I understand it quite satisfactory and are operated extremely well, with a great deal of care a n d - * supervision. , -` .; r*r 1 * i%r-i w . Dr- R. A. Kehoe - fc -- d a t e ..?.th ..December t I S 56. We sent you some little time ago a rough set up of a folder we propose preparing to send out to any company intending to build a mixing plant, and I would like to suggest, if you are agreeable, that you prepare a similar folder from the medical point of view, which we can send to any new medical consultants we may engage. I think, should you care to prepare such a folder it would be advisable to include * a letter from yourself outlining clearly the situation of our medical consultants pointing out their responsibility and the exact basis on which you wish them to operate, their relationship to you etc. As you know at the present time our medical consultants forward us a copy of their reports after each examination they make and unless you have any objection I would like very much to continue the practise of having these consultants send us* their reports (they might send you a copy direct instead of through this office) so that we. can keep a complete check on their activity in so far as the regularity or their visits to the plants is concerned. * I believe that a folder such as I suggest provided it contains all the information and instructions that you think should be passed on to our consultants would be of great value and would help considerably in getting this whole question*tied up under closer control and ensure that you yourself establish a closer contact with the men concerned. . Turning to another question which you raised in your letter, namely that transferring Fluid from one drum to another in Italy. I would say that unfortunately we have been driven into doing this or rather we expect to do it within the next month. The Italian Government have imported considerable quantities of Fluid from us some of which they wish to send out to their Colonies, Abyssinia etc., They wil' not ' purchase drums from us neither will they pay deposit and they further insist on using containers of local manufacture of which they now have at least 2,000 prscared in" readiness for the erection of their own plant in Italy. Y!e have offered to lend our drums for an indefinite period and.have made every other suggestion that nas occured to us, but so far without effect. They still insist that a certain quantity of Fluid should be transferred to their drums making it quite clear, that unless we instruct them as to how to carry out this operation, they will do it in tr.eir own way without our help. In view of this fact, it seems to me better to supervise the operations, without of course accepting any responsibility. ' This situation, I entirely agree with you, is most unsatisfactory, but so is everything else connected with our business in Italy, and I for one would be only too glad to cease connection with that market entirely. The Italians are far more trouble than they are worth and things get worse instead of better. I am having prepared a list of all the medical consultants *nics we have on our books together with their addresses and if if is ready in time will enclose it with this letter otherwise I will forward it to you within the next few d&rrs. ~ The Memorandum you enclose with your letter I am having t r a m s . l a i nt0 prenc^| German, Dutch and Italian and will let you have the proofs in the near future. Returning once more to the question of the Medical folder I gug 65y) should you care for the Idea, that It would be as well if you had it made up in^Emslish, German,I n n >v < n K t UuU <i i -Dr..Kehoe. -5- d a t e ... 28th December,.1956.... French, Italian and also possibly Dutch. Spanish also of course would be useful. I hope I have covered the majority of the points you raised in your letter, but if not would you please let me know, when I will attempt to clear them up. Kindest personal regards. * HL. K t 000 8