Bellevue Hospital

“ In New York City a medical examiner or nurse from the psychopathic wards of Bellevue Hospital, or both, may be sent "to the place where the alleged insane person resides or is to be found." If in the opinion of this examiner medical care is necessary, the patient is taken to the psychopathic ward for observation for a period of not to exceed ten days. When a person has been committed to a state hospital in New York, the Superintendent is required by law to send a trained nurse or attendant to bring the patient to the institution. ”

“ The Bellevue Hospital Training School in New York City is the pioneer, being the first one established in the United States. It was commenced as an experiment in 1873 with six nurses, and has succeeded so well as to now accommodate sixty, who have the charge of fourteen wards. It is the largest, and in many respects the best, offering a greater variety of disease, and therefore giving the nurses more knowledge and experience in the treatment of the various ills to which humanity is subjected. ”

“ He graduated from Columbia College in 1862 and from Bellevue Hospital Medical College in 1866, lecturing there for some time on orthopedic surgery, and afterwards on obstetrics in the University of Vermont, also holding successively a surgeonship in the Charity, Bellevue, and Presbyterian Hospitals. ”

“ Most of the cases appearing for treatment in the wards of that institution are of the most advanced type, for the nature of the New York hospital system may be said in a general way to select for Bellevue the least hopeful patients coming from the least hopeful classes of society. ”

“ Upon his return to America he was appointed attending surgeon to Bellevue Hospital and in 1887 became professor of genito-urinary surgery in Bellevue Hospital Medical College. In 1898 he was made professor of clinical surgery in the department of genito-urinary diseases in Cornell University Medical College. ”

“ Among the models thus presented may be mentioned that of the rapid establishment of the morgue. This, the largest ever organized in Canada, was fitted up by forty soldiers and mechanics in the brief period of a day and a half. Another instance was that of the American Hospital. “At nine a. m. Bellevue was an officer's mess. By ten p. m. the same day it was a first-class sixty-six bed hospital, stocked with food and medicine and, in charge of Major Giddings;” ”

“ The university is co-educational (since 1872) , and comprises the graduate school, with 306 students in 1909; the college of arts and sciences (902 students) ; the college of law (225 students) , established in 1887; the medical college (217 students, of whom 29 were taking freshman or sophomore work in Ithaca, where all women entering the college must pursue the first two years of work) —this college was established in 1898 by the gift of Oliver Hazard Payne, and has buildings opposite Bellevue hospital on First Avenue and 28th Street, New York city ”

“ Thomas' Hospitals, now in process of construction at the Surrey Side of the Thames, in Lambeth, opposite the Houses of Parliament, will combine a number of hospitals for Special Diseases, and will accommodate about 2,000 patients, with as many beds, and will have an income of £50,000 a year, or more.
It is impossible to think of any disease, complaint, deformity, or injury to any member or organ of the body, which has not its special hospital or institution for relief or cure, in the English metropolis. ”

“ Such disadvantages might be entirely removed if parliament would decide to throw open every poor-law infirmary for clinical purposes, and to have connected with each such establishment a responsible visiting medical staff, consisting of the best qualified men to be found in the community which each hospital serves. The old prejudice against hospital treatment has disappeared, for the least intelligent members of the population now understand that, when a citizen is sick, there is no place so good as the wards of a well-administered hospital. ”

“ If we close the ward to visitors ... we have never in all the years the hospital has been in existence done ... that! Public confidence is our greatest asset. Has been. What shall we do? The newspapers, the police, the reputation of the hospital, d’y’see?”
“Too well, sir.”
But the tension was wearing itself out in speech and Dr. MacArthur went on:
“The hysteria among the nursing and medical staffs was bad enough, God knows, but before today is over, we must face the hysteria manifesting itself among the menial staff. How can a hospital run without orderlies, electricians, cooks? ”

“ Most people assume that the older generations did not know how to build good hospitals. They did as well as they could, but until the development of modern knowledge of hygiene and sanitation, as well as the demand made on hospital administration by modern surgery, hospitals could scarcely be expected to be anything but the sordid piles of buildings they usually were, thought proper if they but furnished a protection from the weather and sustenance for the sick poor. ”

“ The disadvantages, inseparable from general hospitals, are such as can never be counterpoised by all the regularities of medicine and regimen. Nature and kind nursing save a much greater proportion in our plain way, at a smaller expense, and with less abuse. One branch only of hospital institution is wanting with us; that is, a general establishment for those laboring under difficult cases of chirurgery. ”

“ Often, too, these diseases rose to the height of epidemic pestilences, so that patients, however extreme their need, dreaded the very name of hospital, and the most skilful surgeons distrusted their own craft. New hospitals or new wards were built, yet after a very short time the new became as pestiferous as the old; and even scrupulous care in ventilation and housemaids’ cleanliness failed to prevent the devastation. Surgery had enlarged its freedom, but only to find the weight of its new responsibilities more than it could bear. ”

“ Our plan, we reasoned, was analogous to the custom of “private” hospitals, which give free treatment or charge according to the resources of the ward patients. Both private hospitals and visiting nursing are thereby lifted out of “charity” as comprehended by the people.
We felt that for economic reasons valuable and expensive hospital space should be saved for those for whom the hospital treatment is necessary; and an obvious social consideration was that many people, particularly women, cannot leave their homes without imperiling, or sometimes destroying, the home itself. ”

“ My Richmond friends never lost sight of me for one day during my service in that city. Nearly every day my little boy was sent for to play among happy children, far away from the impure atmosphere of the hospital, which was soon filled with patients suffering from almost every form of disease.
As the demand for more room became pressing, the three stories of the main building were successively utilized, as well as a large storage-room in the yard. The ground-floor contained the surgeons' and steward's offices, store-rooms, etc., while the second and third formed two immense sick-wards. ”

“ The current system of large hospitals is abandoned, as being equivalent to 'warehousing diseases on the largest possible scale;' while special hospitals are deemed unnecessary—'as if the different organs could walk out of the body and present themselves for separate treatment.' Each hospital has an ambulance ready to be sent out to bring any injured persons to the institution; the ambulance drives straight into the hospital, where a bed of the same height on silent wheels receives the patient, and conveys him or her to a ward. ”

“ Through the courtesy of one of the largest Boston hospitals, a clinic is held weekly in its Out-Patient Department. The hospital is in no way responsible for the clinic, simply lending the room in which the clinics are held. ”

“ Since the revolution, the improvements introduced into the interior government of the Hôtel-Dieu have been great and rapid. Each patient now has a bed to himself. Those attacked by contagious disorders are transferred to the Hospice St. Louis. Insane persons are no longer admitted; men, thus afflicted, are sent to a special hospital established at Charenton; and women, to the Salpétrière. Nor are any females longer received into the Hôtel-Dieu to lie-in; an hospital having been established for the reception of pregnant women. ”

“ The bedsteads are of wood; upon inquiring why they were not of iron, they replied, they were afraid to use them, on account of the heavy thunder-storms which frequently occur. Six physicians and four surgeons are attached to the hospital, and alternately attend. One physician and one surgeon live free of expense in the hospital, and one of them must always be present for extraordinary cases. The apothecary’s shop attached to the hospital is kept very neatly; however, it appeared to me to be inferior to those in the hospitals of Boston and Montreal. ”

“ The glorious halls and corridors, the massive marble pillars, the splendid marble staircases, indicate wealth, but the perfection of the sanitary and scientific arrangements tells of long years of anxious thought and study and research. So perfectly is this marvellous hospital built that, in the event of plague or cholera breaking out to such an extent as to infect the building, the whole of the inside of the hospital can be removed and another hospital will still be left standing as complete as the other. ”

“ Hospitals were costly things to establish, still costlier to maintain efficiently. “Let be,” they said; “we can do nothing.” Men always do talk like that in face of such difficulties, but, fortunately, their arguments never yet held back a woman who had set her heart on a great work of love.
Sister Agnes gradually evolved an idea of a great hospital richly endowed and well officered, ruled by a competent 187 governing body, and animated throughout by one idea—to heal by the shortest and most effectual methods, the sufferers who sought its portals ”

“ Central Authority in the Poor Law institutions is constantly rising, in correspondence with the progress of hospital science. We see all this reflected in the advice and criticisms pressed by the inspectorate on the boards of guardians. "The workhouses of a past and bygone age," says Mr. Hervey in 1903, "are no longer refuges for able-bodied, but are becoming every day more of the nature of State hospitals for the aged, sick, and infirm. As such, they should be furnished with the very best nursing procurable." ”

“ During its two years of work for the sick and wounded, no military hospital has succeeded in establishing a finer record. To see it is a wonderful experience. The hospital consists of 17 wards, with 578 beds, and is entirely staffed by women—surgeons, doctors, pathologists, oculists, dental surgeons, anæsthetists, dispensers, nurses, orderlies. The only men are the patients.
Sir Alfred Keogh, the Director-General of the Army Medical Service, said, when speaking of it: “The hospital is in every respect a military hospital, differing in no way from any other military hospital in the country. ”

“ They were very amused to find that “the doctor” they had been expecting was a woman!
‘Our main hospital was at Medgidia, and our field hospital at Bulbulmic, only about seven miles from the front. They gave us a very nice building, a barrack, at Medgidia for the hospital, and the personnel were in tents on the opposite hill. We arrived on the day of the offensive, and were ready for patients within forty-eight hours. We were there less than three weeks, and during that time we unpacked the equipment and repacked it. We made really a rather nice hospital at Medgidia, and the field hospital. ”

“ Private subscriptions of citizens maintain the work, which is carried on in three fine buildings of brick and stone on Chardon street, one of which is used as a [64] temporary home for destitute women and children. The Massachusetts General Hospital—which, save for the Pennsylvania Hospital, is the oldest in the country—the Boston City Hospital, the New England Hospital for Women and Children, and a number of other finely-organized institutions care efficiently for the city's sick and suffering. ”

“ It is a curious reflection that whilst in the present war the base hospital has been given, if anything, an undue importance, in the other war it has been practically neglected. Our great hospitals are almost entirely field hospitals, planted right in the middle of the battle, and there we keep our patients till such time as they are to all intents and purposes cured. A very few convalescent homes will admit cases which still require treatment, but only a very few. ”

“ What an Augean stable for a weak woman to cleanse! Then again nothing annoys the public more than to open the doors of its whited sepulchres. Of course, it was no use to condemn the present system without putting something better in its place. The workhouse infirmary was far better in one sense; there, the object was to help the patient to get well as speedily as possible, and take himself off the books; but there attaches a stigma to the infirmary from which the hospital is free, yet the hospital must be reformed on the model, in some respects, of the infirmaries. ”

“ The authorities of the Prince’s Hospital, lacking obstetrical wards, had made this course the opportunity for establishing an Out-patient Department that could deal with ten cases a week at the nominal charge of five shillings each. The students worked in pairs, and though they could never be sure of attending their cases together, the resident staff of the hospital, and, if necessary, a consultant physician, were always available in case of an emergency. Edwin and Boyce were housed in one of p. 467the faded Georgian buildings that faced the hospital. ”