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| Cortland Hospital on Clayton Avenue. |
HOSPITAL REPORTS.
Encouraging Words From the President and
Secretary.
The
following are the reports of the secretary and president of the Cortland
Hospital association for the past year:
To the Cortland Hospital Association:
To the President and Members of the Cortland
Hospital Association:
The
Cortland Hospital association has now completed the third year of its work, and
the necessity for such an institution in our populous and growing town has been
proven again and again. The benefits of care and treatment received at our
hospital during the year now closed have been extended further beyond our own
immediate town than any previous year. Its privileges and its most watchful
care are extended to all, "without regard to age, sex, color, creed or
nationality."
The board
of managers have held meetings the first Monday of each month during the year,
at which the regular routine business of the hospital has been carefully looked
after. Two changes have occurred in the membership of the board: Mrs. A. E.
Heath was elected to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of Mrs.
Forrest; and Mrs. S. E. Curtis has taken the place of Mrs. H. J. Harrington,
resigned.
The
number of cases treated in the house since the opening, two years and ten
months ago, is 65. The number of patients cared for during the past year has
been 25, 11 males, 14 females. Of this number 19 were medical and 6 surgical cases.
Eleven were discharged cured, 4 improved, 3 unimproved, 3 have died and 4 still
remain in the hospital under treatment.
The whole
number of days' occupancy has been 697. Of these 25 patients, 18 have made some
remuneration for their care, the prices paid ranging from $1 to $7 per week.
The physicians in attendance have been Drs. Moore, Higgins, Strowbridge, Angel,
Didama, Reese, Dana, Henry and White of Cortland; Robinson of Homer and Forshee
of McGrawville. The patients treated have been from Cortland, Homer, McGrawville,
Truxton, Preble, Scott, Cape Vincent and Owego.
We were
specially fortunate in securing, last July, Miss Mary Roberts of Syracuse as
nurse. She is a graduate of a training school for nurses of Birmingham, England, and has had wide and valuable experience
in her profession. She is proving herself very competent in every department of
her work. Difficult surgical cases have come under her care, and our physicians
express themselves highly gratified at the efficiency which she is showing. The
interest she manifests in all pertaining to our hospital could not be greater,
it would seem, if it were her own household and the patients were members of
her own family.
At the
completion of the Central school building last April the board of education kindly offered us the use of that
building for an evening reception. This offer was gladly accepted and the occasion
proved a success socially and financially—$85 being added to our treasury from
voluntary offerings received that evening.
In August
Miss Anna Baum, assisted by local musicians, gave a vocal recital for our
benefit, and our funds were increased $30 by this entertainment. From the
offering of the children at the public schools we received $32.
Several
churches of our own town and Homer have recently observed "Hospital Sunday," and the aggregate amount of these
collections has been $124.30. This is divided equally between the Old Ladies' Home
and the hospital, and so gives us as our share, $62.15. From the other churches
which are soon to take collections for us we hope to realize quite an
additional amount.
The
King's Daughters have shown their continued interest in, and their fostering care
of our association by the gift of $25. From the hospital mite boxes which that
society placed some time ago in the D. L. & W. and E. C. & N. stations
we have received $8.19.
During
the year the sum of $340.50 has been received from patients for board. Our only
source of income, besides these mentioned, has been from money received from
individual contributions.
Through
the courtesy of the press we have been supplied with the local weekly and daily
papers, and all calls upon them for space in their columns for the publication
of reports for notices have been cheerfully and promptly met.
A
Thanksgiving dinner was provided for nurse and patients by the kindness of two
ladies of our town, and supplies for a bountiful Christmas dinner came from another.
Many thoughtful and generous friends have given substantial aid in sending
supplies of all kinds, delicacies for the sick, clothing, food, furnishings for
the house of various kinds. One urgent need, which had been felt ever since our
organization, has been supplied by another friend—an operating table for the
surgical department. In November the annual contributions from the children of
the public schools were received. Besides the cash given, there were enough
supplies for the table received from this source to last nearly or quite all
winter.
This
practical appreciation of our many needs has been a source of encouragement to
all immediately connected with the work, and its continuance will help to keep
the work moving on towards greater usefulness.
The
managers are sometimes surprised own town know about our ways and means, our
accommodations and our limitations. We feel convinced that if the people of our
own and neighboring towns would visit the hospital more frequently and acquaint
themselves with our methods of usefulness, their support would be given more
freely, and our work might thereby be greatly enlarged.
Many
pleasant associations and much perplexing work have entered into the experience
of the past three years. The kindest of feelings and most harmonious co-operation
have always existed in the management. We confidently trust the coming year
will be one of greater success than any in the past.
Respectfully
submitted,
MRS.
ADDISON E. BUCK, Sec'y.
Cortland,
Feb. 5, 1894.
In the
report of the secretary you have had a review of the work of the year, the
results of which have been very satisfactory to the managers and we trust they
will be to the public. The financial report is necessarily delayed owing to
illness in the family of the treasurer, but will soon be ready for your
consideration. We will, however, forestall it so far as to announce that we
close the year practically free from debt. Some of the January bills are not
yet paid, but we have enough to meet them when presented,
In view
of the drain made upon the public purse by the World's Fair and of the general
stagnation in business that has since followed we feel it to be a matter for
congratulation that we have been able to maintain the hospital through this
trying period without incurring debt. But the work has been greatly hampered and
restricted for want of funds and if many things have been left undone which
ought to have been done it was because of the constant and pressing necessity
of raising the money to meet the monthly bills. We have felt compelled to deny
ourselves many things usually considered essential in hospital work.
We
commence the year empty-handed, but relying as heretofore on the generosity of
the public. The increase in receipts from paying patients is a hopeful sign
pointing to the time when our hospital shall be largely if not wholly self-supporting,
but until that happy hour arrives we must continue to ask the aid of charitably
disposed persons. The cheerful readiness with which they have responded to our
appeals for help assure us that we shall not ask in vain.
A
particularly pleasant feature of our work has been the many unsolicited gifts
that have come to us, some of them from former residents of our village who have
shown their sympathy with our effort and their love for their old home by their
generous offerings.
A few
words with regard to our hopes and plans for the future seem appropriate at
this time. The movement that was begun early in the year to secure a permanent
borne was, owing to the stringency of the times, suspended until a return of
business prosperity should warrant its resumption. The house which we have
occupied the past three years has been leased for another year, but we are
constantly being reminded of its limitations and we look forward impatiently to
the time when we shall be established in more convenient and commodious quarters.
An
arrangement has recently been perfected which it is hoped will add materially to
the usefulness arid prosperity of the hospital. The physicians of our village
have kindly consented to give their professional services to all patients unable
to pay more than $5 per week to the hospital, patients to be allowed their
choice in physicians as heretofore. While physicians have in the past rendered
gratuitous service to charity patients, the hospital has realized no financial
benefit from their services, as those who were able to pay even a little were
expected to remunerate their physicians and the little they had to spare was
divided between physicians and hospital.
A nurses'
registry is also to be established for the benefit of the public. This registry
will include all the nurses in the vicinity who choose to enter their names and
will be a convenience to all classes.
The
endowment of free beds is provided for in our bylaws in the following clause,
"Any person or association may endow a free bed by the annual payment of
one hundred and fifty dollars and have the right of nominating to the executive
committee the patient who may occupy said free bed and select the attending
physician, provided the regulations of the association and of its proper officers
are complied with and provided that said patient shall not occupy said bed for
a longer period than three months without permission of the executive committee."
What church, school, order, club, town or individual will lead in the
establishment of a free bed?
In the
report of the House of Mercy, Pittsfield, Mass., we find this with regard to
the endowment of free beds as memorials to deceased friends; "To us it
seems so much better to evolve a living monument from the daily blessings of
sufferers relieved than to pile lofty monuments of stone, where proud monuments
do shine."
In
comparing our three years' work with that of the early years of older hospitals
we find much to encourage us. We see that their managers encountered the same
obstacles we have met and those institutions passed through the same process of
evolution that ours is now doing. Hospitals that now number endowment by
thousands accomplished no more in the first years than ours has done, but as
their worth came to be better understood and appreciated, patients and
endowments came in a rapidly increasing ratio. That their later experience may
also be ours is the earnest wish of your board of managers.
JULIA E. HYATT,
Pres.
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| Print copied from Historical Souvenir of Oneonta. |
WAS
WHOLLY DESTROYED BY FIRE LAST NIGHT.
All
Books, Apparatus and Records Lost—Cost $160,000, Insured for $75,000—Will
Be Rebuilt.
The following dispatch was received at The
STANDARD office this morning.
ONEONTA,
N. Y., Feb. 16, 1894.
E. D.
Blodgett:
Normal
burned to ground. Nothing saved.
FRANK D.
BLODGETT.
A further dispatch from Oneonta gives
additional particulars, as follows:
ONEONTA, Feb. 16.
The State Normal school building at this
place was totally destroyed by fire last evening. The building was 340 x 130 feet,
three stories high with a basement and cost $160,000. It is insured for
$75,000. The fire started at 5 o'clock in the waste paper room in the basement
near the boiler under the primary department and spread with such rapidity that
all efforts to save the building proved futile. The books, apparatus and all
other contents of the building except the janitors furniture were burned. Dr
James M. Milne, the principal, and Prof. W. H. Lynch, principal of the
intermediate department, and the janitors family were the only ones in the
building. They escaped. Over 400 students were attending the school. The building
will be rebuilt. With a part of the walls standing, and ruins smoking,
arrangements have been made to continue Normal school work in Oneonta on Monday
morning.
The recipient of the first dispatch took it
at once to the Cortland Normal school. Chapel exercises were just completed
when the dispatch was handed to Dr. Cheney who read it to the assembled school.
After a moments pause Dr. Cheney spoke with much feeling of the loss which
Oneonta, New York state, and the cause of education in general has sustained.
He referred to the unprecedented growth of that new school, which though only
four and one-half years old, has come to the rank among the foremost in the
state in point of numbers, as well as of scholarship. Dr. Cheney then appointed
the following committee of students to draft an expression of sympathy on the
part of the Cortland Normal to be forwarded to the Oneonta Normal: Messrs. A.
D. Weeks, R. E. Corlew, Misses Cora E. Peck, Julia A Titus, Catherine Buchanan
and Mrs. E. H. Caswell. The committee reported as follows:
WHEREAS, the Oneonta Normal school has suffered an irreparable loss in
the burning of its school building on the evening of Feb. 15, 1894, therefore,
be it
Resolved,
first, that we, the students of Cortland Normal school, tender our deepest
sympathy to both faculty and students of the Oneonta Normal.
Resolved,
secondly, that a copy of these resolutions be sent to Dr. James M. Milne,
principal of the Oneonta Normal school, and that a copy be handed to the
Cortland STANDARD and to the Cortland Democrat for publication.
ARLAND D. WEEKS,
RUFUS E. CORLEW,
JULIA A. TITUS,
CATHERINE BUCHANAN,
MRS. E. H. CASWELL, committee.
Cortland, N. Y. Feb. 16, 1894.
A dispatch sent immediately from Dr. Cheney
to Dr. James M. Milne, principal of the Oneonta school, expressed the sympathy
of the Cortland faculty with their associate teachers in Oneonta.
PAGE TWO—EDITORIALS.
A Timely
Law.
The burning of the Oneonta Normal school
building will serve to emphasize the importance and necessity of the passage of
a bill now before the legislature, drawn by Secretary John W. Suggett of the
local board of the Cortland Normal school, and recently introduced in the state
senate by Senator O'Connor. The bill reads as follows:
An disposition and use of insurance moneys
received for loss or damage of property in the State Normal and Training Schools.
The People of the state of New York
represented in senate and assembly do meet as follows:
SEC. 1. Where any loss or damage, against
which insurance exists, occurs to the real
or personal property of any of the State Normal and Training schools, the
moneys paid to the state by reason of such insurance shall be kept as a
separate fund; shall be immediately available, and are hereby appropriated, to
be expended under the direction of the local board of managers of any such
school, subject to the approval of the state superintendent of public instruction,
to repair or replace, wholly or partially, the real or personal property so
damaged or destroyed.
SEC. 2. This act shall take effect immediately.
While the local boards of nearly all the
Normal schools have carried insurance on the school buildings, there has been
no provision on the statute books for the prompt application of moneys derived
from insurance to repairing or erecting anew a building injured or destroyed by
fire or replacing its contents. In case a building burns, the insurance being
in the name of the state, all moneys derived therefrom go into the treasury of
the state, and there remain till the legislature appropriates them to the
purposes for which the insurance was intended or otherwise disposes of them. Should
a Normal building be injured or destroyed by fire just after the adjournment of
the legislature, nothing whatever could be done to fit it for school uses again
till after another legislature had met and passed the necessary bill and the governor
signed it. This would consume nearly a year, and another year might be required
before repairs or rebuilding could be completed. The salaries of teachers
meanwhile would go on just the same, should the teachers not succeed in getting
employment elsewhere, and all the money thus expended would be a total loss to
the state. The closing of the school for two years would send all or nearly all
its students to other schools, and when it finally did reopen it would be
practically as a new school, its only advantage over such a school being in the
interest and loyalty of its alumni and in the reputation enjoyed by former
teachers who might again take places in its faculty.
Oneonta is fortunate in its misfortune in
having the legislature in session, to which it can appeal at once for an
appropriation of its insurance moneys and for whatever additional money is needed
to rebuild and newly equip its burned building. The circumstances of this case
ought to convince every candid legislator of the justice and wisdom of Senator
O'Connor's bill and secure its prompt passage.
A Slow
Trip to Scott.
About twenty-five couples of Cortland… people
started at 7 o'clock Thursday night in carryalls and single sleighs for the
Scott hotel for a party. The affair was originated and the details were
arranged by Messrs. Stephen D. Alexander and Frank Doughty. The roads were very
bad and it was nearly 10 o'clock before they reached Scott. Mine Host William
Roach had a sumptuous and elaborate supper prepared for them to which all did
full justice.
Dancing followed, the music being furnished
by a Scott orchestra. It was late before they started for home, and it was much
later before they reached home, as the roads were drifted nearly full, one by
one the teams reached Cortland from 5 to 6 o'clock in the morning.
Town
Meeting.
The Town Meeting for the town of Cortlandville
will be held at the old Democrat office on West Court-st. in the village of
Cortland, N. Y., on Tuesday, Feb. 20, 1894. The polls will be opened at
sunrise. The Myers ballot machines will be used in voting for candidates; also
a resolution as to whether the town shall purchase four of the Myers ballot machines
at a cost of $480 each.
And a resolution to raise the sum of $100
for Decoration day will be voted upon at that time.
(597-4t)
BY ORDER OF TOWN BOARD.
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| 1899 mechanical lever voting machine. |
BREVITIES.
—Groton voted against purchasing the Myers
ballot machine last Tuesday.
—The person who appropriated a geological specimen
from the collection in Fireman's hall had better return it, as he is known.
—The Myers ballot machines to be used at
town meeting on Tuesday are expected to be in working order and on exhibition
in the old Democrat office in the Hulbert building to-morrow.
—On Friday evening, March 2, Denman Thompson's
Old Homestead quartet assisted by Alice Girardeau, dramatic and humorous reciter,
appear in the Opera House in the Y. M. C. A. course.
—Thomas Donnelly, a blacksmith living on
Homer-ave., was arraigned in police court this morning on the charge of public
intoxication. He was in doubt at first as to whether he had been drunk or was
sober, but he concluded that he had been drunk. Justice Bull sentenced him to
three days or three dollars.
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