One of the ways airlines save money is by cutting back on the fresh air they dispense to passengers while flying. Viral strains and bacterial bugs are offered the opportunity to party, proliferate, and take their pick of sitting targets as they re-circulate round and round the enclosed environment of a high-pressure cabin, transforming it into a toxic mutation and migration zone for airborne infectious diseases. Influenza, Meningococcal disease, tuberculosis, and SARS (a non-typical pneumonia coronavirus) are all known to thrive within airliner ventilation systems. Which is how we came to involuntarily investigate Santa Barbara's emergency health-care services.

The Investigator arrived home after two 10-hour flights within a week
-- and within a day required emergency treatment from whatever bug fest had feasted upon body and soul.

It begins with an excruciating sore throat -- a gullet on fire, along with a swelling that renders swallowing an abstract concept.
Breathing is also an issue.

Sansum Urgent Care Center seems the right fit for a strep test and a remedy. (Poisoning also comes to mind, perhaps from fever-induced paranoia, having just consorted with a variety of spooky sources -- including Russians, for tea -- in the Polonium capital of the world.)

The registration form to gain admittance is remarkably brief and, within minutes, a nurse named Heather conducts rudimentary tests. She rules out strep, focuses on a low-scored oxygen-level test, and calls for an oxygen tank. Chest X-rays are next -- and a decision to alert the emergency room at Cottage Hospital. In advance of transportation, an intravenous drip is inserted.

A three-man ambulance crew, led by Brandon, arrives. Although the ride to Cottage is less than 10 minutes, Brandon adroitly repeats a series of checks -- pulse, temperature, blood pressure, and oxygen -- and determines that a dose of Ambutol will relieve breathing. He patches his assessment to a doctor at Cottage, receives a fast decision, and administers this medication through a mask.

Attention and care upon arrival at Cottage is immediate. Nurses conduct tests; a doctor and his assistant interview patient, study the results -- and diagnose early pneumonia in both lungs. But just to be safe, since blood clots are an issue with air travel (especially long-distance flights), a CT scan is administered.

The diagnosis stands firm: Double pneumonia. A pulmonary specialist is swiftly consulted; he recommends admission to hospital for observation and antibiotic cocktails by drip -- a happy hour that includes morphine. The room is simple, clean and private. The nurses are attentive and cheerful.

Dr. Pai arrives within minutes, fully cognizant of the case assigned him, equipped with a strategy for treatment.

And the elves, once morphine cuts in, provide entertainment.

This occurred during peak period for accidents and illness, yet every health-care professional encountered in each sequence of this episode performed in a masterly, expeditious, thorough, caring, sympathetic and reassuring manner, right down to the final on-duty nurse, who completed her mission with sage words: "You've got to invest in your health first -- whatever else you invest in won't be worth squat if your health goes."

Health care is not always this sane.

Three years ago this week, Rosemary Kennedy -- sister to President John and Senators Robert and Edward -- died of natural causes at age
86 near a special care facility in Wisconsin, where she had lived almost all her adult life.

Obviously, she'd had decent health care. It is what happened to poor Rosemary at the tender age of 23 that continues to haunt us.

Dr. Bertram Brown, a former Deputy Surgeon General of the U.S., once called it "The biggest mental health cover-up in history."

Let's uncover it.

Rosemary Kennedy was not mentally retarded, as Kennedy lore suggests.
But even if she were, family patriarch Joseph Kennedy's ultimate solution for dealing with such a handicap would still be
unforgivable: He made his daughter submit to a prefrontal lobotomy.

The procedure took place in 1941 at St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Washington D.C., where America's original lobotomist, Dr. Walter Freeman, practiced his favorite experimental psychosurgery, usually with a bespoke gold-plated ice pick.

For a start, lobotomy was never supposed to be conducted on the mentally retarded. It was designed for the mentally insane, as a means to relieve chronic aggression.

But Rosemary was not insane, either.

She was temperamental, possibly depressed, with a lower-than-average I.Q.

As such, Rosemary was an embarrassment to her father, who possessed high political ambitions for his sons. Her tantrums, compounded by promiscuity, deeply troubled Joe, who fretted she might become pregnant and shame the family.

So while Joe's wife, Rose, was away, and without her knowledge, he consulted Walt Freeman, who agreed that prefrontal lobotomy was a fine fix for a young woman in the prime of her life who was having, perhaps, too much fun. It would, promised Walt, put an end to her "mood swings that the family found difficult to handle at home." (Part of the reason Rosemary was difficult to handle at home was because her siblings -- all of higher intelligence -- treated her like moron.)

While the patient recited the Lord's Prayer and sang God Bless America, neurosurgeon James Watts -- supervised by Walt -- cut at Rosemary's prefrontal lobes with an instrument similar to a butter knife 0xc9 until her words became incoherent.

The procedure worked! No more mood swings, no more tantrums, no more promiscuity; and most important, no more embarrassment for Joe.

Also this: No more personality, no more ability to think or speak; a young, vibrant life taken -- sacrificed to pathological ambition.
Walt Freeman liked to say, "Lobotomy gets them home," as he traversed the country in his lobotomobile, a Cortez trailer, goading asylum keepers in 23 states to line up their unruly.

But Rosemary Kennedy did not go home. Incapacitated, with a developmental age of 2, Rosemary was cast off to Wisconsin -- and Joe all but erased her existence from the family.

• Bad karma:

L.A. County Superior Court in Lancaster has issued arrest warrants for two employees of the Santa Barbara District Attorney's Office.

Chief Trial Deputy Joshua Lynn and veteran DA investigator Jim Raimer failed to appear pursuant to subpoenas.

Bench warrants are being held in abeyance until Jan. 14. Messers Lynn and Raimer will either attend court on that date or face arrest.

• Chris Eberz, clarification:

In a recent article about telemarketing scams, we named one Chris Eberz as part of a group involved in get-rich-quick schemes. We wish to make clear that Chris Eberz of Mammoth Moving, a local business enterprise, is not the Chris Eberz named in our story, and that Mammoth Moving is a reputable company.