Naval Hospital

“ DR. ELLIOTT: took up the question of furloughs, stating that at the Naval Hospital in Washington at Christmas time many Veterans’ Bureau patients asked for leave, and pursuant to advice from the District Manager they were given the same amount of leave that the other Naval patients received, from 5 to 10 days.
DR. DEDMAN: spoke on economy. He said he understood a certain rate per diem was to be established for the care of patients, and wanted to call attention to several things in this connection. First, the environment. Some hospitals have central heating plants; others have stoves. ”

“ His first duty station in the Navy after completing his training was Naval Hospital, Beaufort, S.C., where he served for three years working as an anesthesia technician. He has been assigned to the Naval Hospital at Guantanamo Bay since 2004. ”

“ He spent ten months in the autumn of 1862, and the following winter, in the hospitals of Washington, and in July, 1863, he was appointed acting assistant surgeon of Volunteers, and ordered to the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron, where he served on several vessels, and was then put in charge of the naval hospital at Newberne, North Carolina. He obtained his commission as assistant surgeon in the regular navy, in October, 1863, and was assigned to the "San Jacinto" and cruised in the Gulf of Mexico during 1864. ”

“ The cooperation of the American Red Cross with the medical service of the Army and Navy consists of recruiting, organizing and equipping base hospital and other hospital and ambulance units to be called into service when required by the Army or Navy Medical Corps; handling special problems of health and sanitation in connection with the cantonments, camps and naval stations; stimulating the manufacture of surgical dressings and hospital supplies of all kinds; and promoting the comfort and welfare of the men in training or en route from their homes to camps and training stations. ”

“ Thanks to the loyal co-operation of New York and New Jersey business men, and the Naval Commandeering Board, sufficient quantities of supplies were [180] secured to keep going. A typical example of the difficulties encountered can be illustrated by the activity necessary to equip the ship’s hospital. The market was bare of such supplies, due to the incessant demands from our own and our Allies Army and Navy Medical Departments. Manufacturers of surgical supplies from all over the country were appealed to. ”

“ Limitation of medical, surgical or hospital services Hospitalization of the dependents of naval and Marine Corps personnel and of the persons outside the naval service mentioned in section 34 of this title shall be furnished only for acute medical and surgical conditions, exclusive of nervous, mental, or contagious diseases or those requiring domiciliary care. ”

“ The closure of the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., and the resulting construction of the National Military Medical Center at the National Naval Medical Center, Bethesda, Maryland, and a new military hospital at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, offer the Department of Defense the opportunity to provide state-of-the-art and world-class medical facilities offering the highest quality of joint service care for members of the Armed Forces and their families. ”

“ During the period of his office, that excellent establishment, the Naval School, was re-organized; various improvements were introduced in the internal economy [640] of the Hospital; libraries were formed for the amusement of the inmates in their hours of leisure; and much was done for the amelioration of their general habits. But his usefulness was not limited to the precincts of the Hospital. Placed as he was at an easy distance from the metropolis, he was able to obey many calls of benevolence; and to lend his help to many excellent institutions, whether connected with the navy or not. ”

“ Medical students have their year of service confined strictly to hospital duty, passing into the reserve as medical cadets, to serve as such in hospitals only, during war-time. Doctors having diplomas practise for a year in the hospitals and pass to the reserve with the grade of lieutenant. They are liable for sea service in time of war.
The depot, school-ships, machinists’ school and apprentice school are all at Pola, and at the same place there is a school for the children of both sexes of people in the naval service in indigent circumstances. ”

“ Naval hospitals to be constructed.Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the Secretary of the Navy be, and he is hereby authorized, under the direction of the President of the United States, to cause to be constructed, for the use of the navy of the United States, proper hospitals at or near each of the following places, to wit: the navy yard at Charlestown, Massachusetts, the navy yard, Brooklyn, New York, and the navy yard, Pensacola. ”

“ The caring for the veteran patients in the same hospitals in which the sick of the Navy are being treated. In assigning accommodations to the patients of the Veterans’ Bureau there are 120many problem which complicate this matter. Manifestly it is necessary for the Navy to be prepared to receive the patients from its own personnel, and when it is considered that the fleet may at one time be in the port of New York and sending its sick to the New York Hospital during such time and then sail away for another port to then transfer its sick to another hospital the difficulties are apparent. ”

“ Surgeon-General Rixey lamented publicly that when the fleet left Hampton Roads it had no hospital ship with it. While there can be no doubt that some cases could receive better attention on a hospital ship than on a battleship, especially in the way of better quarters and possibly better diet, it is also true that none of the sick on the fleet suffered seriously from the lack of a hospital ship, unless it was in tubercular cases. ”

“ Many patients were unconscious, or too badly injured to speak. Forty-seven per cent of all the cases brought to the hospital were burned. Many were thickly coated with fuel oil. Practically all were in a state of shock.
The Navy is a stickler for records. All through a man's career in the service, whether just for a hitch or for life, two careful, up-to-the-minute, detailed accounts are kept of him. One is his service record ”

“ He has taken out the cabins and made big wards and has accommodations for 800 sick or wounded men. I never saw anything so cleverly done as the way he is making over that ship. He has a splendid operating room, an X-Ray complete equipment, a steam laundry, and absolutely everything that a modern big city hospital has. It will be ready to sail, he said, in ten days, although to us there seemed to be an enormous{19} amount yet to do. They no longer have women nurses on the hospital ships. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The wounded sailors, who were on board the Russian cruiser, Varyag, numbering twenty-four persons were taken first to the French cruiser, Pascal, and then to a temporary hospital that had been hastily established at Chemulpo by our Society. For twenty-two days, those sailors were entirely under the care of the hospital, in which, of course, all necessary treatment was given to them. Unfortunately, however, two of the patients died and the rest when convalescent were brought to a hospital at Matsuyama, Japan. ”

“ Many doctors come into the Navy from civil practice, as Medical Reserve officers for the duration of the war, and wonder at first how they are going to carry on without women nurses, and in the small confines of a fighting ship. The first discovery they all make — and admit with a simplicity that is quite touching to a doctor of the regular Navy — is that the hospital corpsmen, some of whom are lads less than twenty years old, who were students, plumbers, shoe clerks, morticians' helpers, and welders before they enlisted, make most efficient, dependable, and loyal nurses. ”

“ Allowance of rations to Navy hospitals For every Navy officer, seaman, or marine admitted into a Navy hospital, the institution shall be allowed one ration per day during his continuance therein, to be deducted from the account of the United States with such officer, seaman, or marine. ”

“ Ninety per cent of the patients admitted to the Army and Navy Hospital are either cured or relieved. Taking into consideration the large number of old civil war veterans treated at the hospital, whose ailments have become chronic, this is a very remarkable showing. ”

“ It need not be mentioned, that the surgeon is in constant attendance upon the dying man, who has generally been removed from his hammock to a cot, which is larger and more commodious, and is placed within a screen on one side of the sick bay, as the hospital of the ship is called. It is usual for the captain to pass through this place, and to speak to the men every morning ”

“ Arrangements had been made for the casualties sustained by the Navy, but no one had reckoned upon the arrival of a score of seriously injured men of the crew of a small tramp steamer. However, there was one there--a lady in some position of authority--who took the matter into her own hands, with a degree of common-sense and promptitude that stands much to her honour.
"They must go to the American hospital," said she. "They have plenty of accommodation there, and are simply crying out for patients." ”

“ It might also be right to have reserve wards for what must occur every now and then in a Military Hospital, an influx of patients beyond the usual number, or an outbreak of cholera, or some malignant epidemic, which it might be desirable to isolate from the other patients. ”

“ Discipline of patients at Army and Navy Hospital All persons admitted to treatment in the Army and Navy General Hospital at Hot Springs, Arkansas, shall, while patients in said hospital, be subject to the rules and articles for the government of the armies of the United States. ”

“ While one clearing station is filling up and treating the patients, the other will be sending all possible treated cases down the line. From the base hospitals, which are near the sea, the men are forwarded as soon as advisable by hospital ships for distribution among the hospitals of England. ”

“ Treating men who are seriously injured in a large, well-equipped hospital ashore, where it is possible to give them the absolute rest they require, is one thing. Treating them in a small and crowded sick bay aboard ship, and while that ship is running at full speed in a danger zone, knowing that the enemy may renew their attack again at any moment, and that the patients may have to be put over the side on rafts or merely in life jackets, is another story. ”

“ Across the passageway is the cruiser's hospital, or sick bay, with beds for twenty-five patients. The complement of a cruiser is about 1,200 men, so the hospital facilities more than equal those of the most progressive civilian communities. The medical staff of a cruiser usually consists of a chief medical officer, together with an assistant and a dental officer. Under these officers are several pharmacist's mates, trained as anesthetists, laboratory technicians, bacteriologists, and chemists, who give advanced first aid and care for the injured and sick. ”

“ Still another value of this centralization of records and materials grows out of the exceptional mobility of military life. Frequently, it is necessary or desirable to transfer military patients from one hospital to another— as for example, from a post hospital to a more commodious and better-equipped general hospital, or perhaps to a hospital with unusual facilities for the treatment of a particular disease. ”

“ Establishment of Navy hospitals The Secretary of the Navy shall procure at suitable places proper sites for Navy hospitals, and if the necessary buildings are not procured with the site, shall cause such to be erected, having due regard to economy, and giving preference to such plans as with most convenience and least cost will admit of subsequent additions, when the funds permit and circumstances require ”

“ The New York Hospital, which has just been rebuilt and refurnished with all the latest appliances, is in charge of a devoted woman physician, who has given her life to healing, and has at the head of its Board one of the most noted surgeons in the city, who gives his services free, and boasts that he enjoys it best of all his work. Here those of small means or of no means at all, especially those belonging to soldiers and sailors, may find healing of the wisest and most expert kind, in cheery, airy, sanitary and beautiful rooms. ”

“ What brings these men through these trials and dangers is not only their American intestinal fortitude, all of them are armed with knowledge. Somewhere, aboard ship, in naval training stations, or in "boot" camps, doctors wearing the Navy's blue and the gold oak leaves and silver acorns which are the insignia of the Navy Medical Corps have taught these men how to protect themselves, if possible, from infection and disease. ”