NECESSITY OF A HOSPITAL

The Cortland Democrat, Friday, December 26, 1890.

The Necessity of a Hospital.

   MR. EDITOR—The following extracts from the way in which a hospital was started in a Massachusetts town, may furnish some useful suggestions to those who feel interest in the subject and desire to see the same thing done here. After referring to several circumstances which had made many feel the need of such as institution and saying that it seemed too great a work for so small a place, the writer says:

   Perhaps we were waiting for some rich man to die, when lo, a poor old woman started the hospital for us!

   This is how she did it: she became very ill and needed some one to take care of her. She lived all alone. The clergyman and the doctor walked about the streets at mid-night seeking the aid of some friendly neighbor who would minister to the necessities of the poor creature.

   It was during the midnight search for a nurse, while they were rapping at the doors of cottages in the neighborhood, that the scheme for a cottage Hospital was developed.

   "We must have a hospital," said the clergyman. "Yes," replied the doctor, "the time has come. Let us see what we can do."

   But when they spoke to others there was a chorus of disapprovals. "It will be too expensive." "We do not have enough people who will ever need it." "Let every family take care of its own sick," and all of such objections.

   Why, it took three years to convince the community that a hospital was needed, and that it could be started and maintained. We held a meeting now and then, we distributed literature upon the subject, and we made use of the columns of the local papers.

   That three points clearly aimed at were first, the small buildings were better for the purpose than large ones, and consequently we could begin when we had enough money to put up a simple wooden structure. We did not want either stone or brick buildings.

   Second, that we did not need a resident physician. A trained nurse with her helper or helpers would do.

   Third, that physicians and surgeons of schools of medicine could be brought together, and could work in the same institution.

   Whatever else the Newton Hospital has done it has done a great deal of pioneer work in showing that a small hospital of the best character can be started for a small sum of money, that doctors of different schools can treat their patients in the same building, and that a good trained nurse as matron can manage.

   We had a hard struggle to bring the doctors together. Some members of one school thought they could not work with the other, and some plainly said that it should fail if we did not put it entirely into the hands of one school which of course was their school.

   Some happy genius in our Board of Trustees suggested this plan:—

   Patients to be allowed to express their preference for particular schools of medicine.  If they had no preference the matron assigned them to the care of the physicians in order thus:—No. 97 to Allopathy. No. 98 to Homeopathy, No. 99 to Allopathy and so on.

   The matron and nurses were to follow out the directions of the physicians in charge of the case whoever the doctor was.

   Well, the plan has been a great success. There has been no friction whatever.

   We did another thing that was somewhat strange: we forbade the holding of public religious services of any kind in the wards. Perhaps some of our readers may be shocked, but it was necessary to secure the co-operation of all the religious organizations in Newton:—Roman Catholic, Swedenborgian, Universalist, Unitarian and the five or six other kinds, and we could not have them unite if we allowed anything proselytism in the institution. But while no public services are permitted, the patient is allowed to have the ministrations of any minister he may ask for. The Roman priest kneels down by the bedside of the dying man at one end of a ward, and the Methodist preacher comforts his parishioner who lies ill on a coach opposite.

   The popular interest in the movement has grown as the people have seen the success of the institution. We opened the building June 5, 1886. Our expectation was that we would have about twenty-five patients per year and spend perhaps $3,000 in that time. We have averaged nearly fourteen patients per month for each of the past forty months, and last year spent nearly $10,000.

   Since January 1, 1890, 140 have been admitted, and our list reaches now No. 540. We found it hard, when we began, to raise $5,000 for our building.

   We found it easy last year to pay $10,000 for the year's expenses. Money has come to us as we needed it, so that we have gone on enlarging and enlarging until to-day we have quarters for sixty patients, a training school for nurses, isolated buildings for contagious cases, and a morgue, besides nine acres of land.

   Our endowment fund too has been started. It amounts to $11,000 now. The last gift received is a model ambulance for conveying patients to the hospital.

   The success of the Newton Hospital has stimulated other efforts in our neighborhood, and the view is rapidly spreading not only that every place of over 5,000 people needs a hospital but that it can get it and support it. Some of the essential conditions may be briefly stated thus:—

   (1) A good plot of ground, free from noisy and unpleasant surroundings, healthfully situated. If there can be five or ten acres it would be well, but there must be space enough for free air and sunshine.

   (2) A wooden building with a central part for the nurse and helpers, the kitchen, etc., one wing for men, and the other for women. A building of one story will do, then enlarge as you need, add connecting corridors, and put up isolated cottages for special cases.

   It may be safe to say that $5,000 will build the first building, $5,000 more will add a wing or a separate cottage.

   No cellar except under the central building, plenty of light and ventilation, and the simplest possible construction and finish.

   (3) A Board of Trustees made up of representative men and women of the place, willing to give time and trouble and money to make it a success.

   Put women on the Board. They are the best workers. It is amazing what they can do and will do when they are interested in the relief of the sufferings of others, and equally amazing how they get money together. Here they organized a Hospital Aid Society, and that man or woman who slips through the year without giving something has to be pretty adroit. I am glad to say that very few want to slip through. Your Board should consist of ministers, business men, and women. No doctors, and no merely ornamental folk. The doctors have their work in connection with their medical board, to be formed later on; and the ornamental people who simply talk are not needed.

PAGE FOUR/EDITORIALS.

   Those Republican Senators who favor the enactment of the Force bill, say to the people of the United States that they are not competent to count and return the votes they cast for Members of Congress. Between the hues of every speech made in favor of the bill, is a specific charge that the people of this country are too ignorant to be entrusted with the privilege of casting their votes intelligently and counting the result correctly. Any other explanation… in taking this right [OCR copying problem--CC editor]…charging them with ignorance, or they intend to appoint supervisors who will count the vote to suit a Republican Administration. The advocates of the bill intend to perpetrate a fraud upon the people and disfranchise them. The rascally provisions of the bill affect the people of the North and West as well as the South and the bill should not be permitted to disgrace the statute books of the country.

The President's Confession.

   Mr. Harrison thinks that the Southern colored vote "will likely be necessary to the election of a Republican President two years hence." Distinguishing them by hue and history the voters of the United States are thus divided—an immense number of whites who have always been free and have the advantage of centuries of civilization to assist their natural intelligence, and a smaller number of blacks just out of the barbarism of slavery. The freedom and intelligence are against the Republican party; the mediocrity, intensified by serfdom, is its hope.

   What a confession! The full-grown man at the South, alert, vigorous, sagacious to the last degree, looks with disfavor on the President's party. The child-man, groping his way upward, unable to discern the true from the counterfeit, is relied on to sustain it—and to sustain it, too, not by even a blind, free instinct for voting right, but marshaled and driven to the polls as the political serfs of the Republican party, by Federal supervisors appointed at the instance of men like Quay and Dudley! The President's confession is the official explanation of the Force and Fraud bill.—New York World.

A Lesson to Democrats.

   Ex-Postmaster General Clarkson, Secretary of the Republican National Congressional committee, in an interview in the New York Press of Sunday, again attributes the Republican disasters last fall to the work of Democratic newspapers, and says that if the Republicans are to recover the ground they have lost they must strengthen their press. Particularly Clarkson says:

   "The paper to strengthen everywhere is the local paper. The local voter believes in the paper that he knows and that stands up for his local interest. Strengthen first the county paper, then the state paper, then the National. The circulation of Republican literature should be increased by three hundred million copies per year, so as to prepare for the struggle in '92. The Democratic circulation, I think, in 1889 and 1890 exceeded the Republican circulation by that much. The newspaper, the school house and the magazine are the allies and weapons which they have taken from us and used to our disadvantage. The next campaign is to be one of intellect; a campaign of education, one which shall go into the American home and prove to every self respecting family that its prosperity, its maintenance above the average family in Europe, the promotion and welfare of its members, as well as the real strength of the Republic lies with the Republican party and the Republican principles."

   It is wise to learn even from an enemy. Democrats should heed the lesson conveyed in the words of Clarkson, and see that none of the advantage gained through large circulation of Democratic newspapers be lost.—Syracuse Courier.

The Newspaper Affidavit Liar.

The snake liar and the fish liar, both bowed in their gray old age,

Came traveling back from their journeys wide, from their earth-wide pilgrimage;

A tear drop stood in the snake liar's eye, and the fish liar groaned in pain,

And a death-like look of infinite grief came over the face of the twain.

"I cannot compete with the modern lie," the sad-eyed snake liar said;

"In its limitless length and breadth and depth, and 1 wish that I were dead;

For I stand rebuked, with a shamefaced look, 'neath the triumphant gaze of the eye,

Of the newspaper affidavit liar, with his circulation lie.

"For the snake liar and the fish liar and the liars who work by the day;

The travelling liar, old inhabitant liar, and liars of low degree,

And liars who lie for the fun of the thing, and liars who lie for a fee,

The horse liar, the peach crop liar, the sea serpent liar, and all

With the wide untraveled wastes of cheek and their soulless seas of gall,

All bend the knee to the sceptred sway of this crowned and peerless one;

And the father of lies looks tenderly down on his most accomplished son."

—S.W. Foss, in the Yankee Blade.