I've read the 1950 'The Little Black Bag' in other collections, such as The Science Fiction Hall of Fame. I watched 'Rod Serling's Night Gallery,' so I probably saw the second episode of season one that adapted it, but I don't remember it.

Old Dr. Bayard Full lost his right to practice in 1941 because he was bilking patients. He's now a broken-down alcoholic sneaking a bottle of cheap wine to his apartment. A nasty neighbor dog causes him to drop and break the bottle. Teresa, a three-year-old girl, picks up and plays with one of the pieces of broken glass, cutting herself. Dr. Full promises himself he'll take [medical] care of her later as he goes to his filthy apartment.

The scene cuts to the future. It's probably the 24th century, given what's stamped on a medical instrument in that little black bag in the title. This is a future where people of subnormal intelligence have outbred the people of normal and supra normal intelligence for 20 generations. Dr. Hemingway is a stupid general practitioner. Good thing that his medical bag has been made as idiot proof as possible. He's chatting with Walter Gillis, Ph.D., a stupid physicist. The ersatz physicists are watched over by Mike, a brilliant one who pretends to be a mere bottle washer. Mike gives Dr. Gillis the information he needs to create a time machine. Alas, Dr. Gillis uses it on Dr. Hemingway's bag, even though he knows it's a one-way trip (yes, stupid). Hemingway doesn't report its loss to Al (another genius doing is social stint in guiding the stupid masses), the clerk who tracks the medical bags these stupid doctors keep losing.

The bag turns up in Dr. Full's filthy apartment. He plans to pawn it, but a frantic mother urges him to come to save her very sick child. The patient is Teresa, now dying of an infection she got from the cut with the dirty glass. Dr. Full cures her with the help of the medical bag. A blond girl, probably 18, has told Teresa's other about Dr. Full. Angie is astonished that little Teresa is cured, but shrewdly guesses that the bag doesn't belong to Dr. Full.

They're unable to pawn the bag because the pawn shop owners don't recognize the medical instruments in it. Dr. Full uses the bag to become a real doctor again. Angie goes to charm school and becomes his receptionist/assistant.

Edna Flannery, staff writer for 'The Herald' newspaper, is writing aa series of articles exposing medical quacks and faith healers. By the time she checks out Dr. Full, he has a spotlessly clean Sanitarium on East 89th Street. We learn about her experience through reading her draft that copy editor Piper is going through. Edna was cured of a non life-threatening problem and declares that Dr. Full is no quack.

Dr. Full is altruistically thinking of donating the bag to the College of Surgeons when Angie brings a rich patient in for cosmetic surgery on her throat. After Mrs. Coleman leaves, pleased, Dr. Full tells money-grubbing Angie his plan. She objects.

What Angie does next gets the attention of Al in the future and he takes care of the problem.

My biggest problem with this story is that the despicable practice of forced sterilizations was still going on in 1950. Even if the brilliant people of centuries in the future didn't want to do something so unethical, you can't tell me that they couldn't have come up with removeable contraceptive implants. ( )