State hospital

Definition and stakes

James Vance May,  Mental diseases: a public health problem

“ THE STATE HOSPITALS—THEIR ORGANIZATION AND FUNCTIONS The efficiency of the hospital is very largely a reflection of its organization, administration and personnel, but the material equipment of the institution and the financial resources available are factors of no less importance. The future of a hospital is often settled for all time by the degree of judgment exercised in determining its location. The founders must be guided to a very great extent by the purposes which they hope to accomplish. ”
Source: Gutenberg

Various,  Popular Science Monthly (1893)

“ Let us take, for example, a State hospital of one thousand patients. The staff would consist of a medical superintendent, five assistant physicians, and a woman physician. In a hospital of that capacity there would never be more than one hundred patients who would be considered curable, and the number would probably not exceed sixty. More than nine hundred patients would be hopelessly incurable, for the most part the wrecks of past disease, who practically need nothing but kindly custodial care with incidental medical treatment. ”
Source: Wikisource

Conference of Officers in Charge of Government Hospitals Serving Veterans of the World War

“ With reference to space allowed per patient, thought that there should be a difference in accordance with the classes of patients; that he has charge of a hospital for mental cases, and it would be necessary to arrange for 100 square feet; these men are not suffering from physical disabilities. He stated that the State Hospitals cannot provide even fifty square feet of floor space and that it was absolutely necessary for the Veterans’ Bureau to take out of the State hospitals every insane patient they have. ”
Source: Gutenberg

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