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Show tions our practice has been not unlike un-like that of the Romans, who exposed their aged and infirm slaves to death by the elements upou an Island in the Tiber Take, for example, the early history of New York's greatest public charity, Bollevue Hospital, which during dur-ing a con.s.'derable part of the last century was the general city jioor-house. jioor-house. 'There." the records ol tbo institution tell us, 'in buildings intended in-tended for general almshouse administration, adminis-tration, were congregated In one sickening sick-ening mass the destitute, the prisoners, prison-ers, the victim of all forms of ln-feitlous ln-feitlous and contagious disease, ths insane, and the sick dependent children chil-dren of the city."' And how truly that "sickening mas'' wai regarded aj merely a scrap-heap the care of the Inmates bears wilness. In the midst of the glorious sixties, when the Nation Na-tion was aflame for the alolltion of African slavery, an eridemlc. duo to the completo lack of all sanitary arrangements, ar-rangements, raeed in Bollevue. "The patients." relates a visiting physician, ' had ben removed to one of the gar-rct-llke wards Immediately beneath the roof. The shingles were broken, and the bedrf, on account of the great number f victims, bad to be pla ! so closely that the drlp-X'OrS, whjch wero employed to catch the floods o rain, could no longer be kept on tin floor, but were placod upon the beds "The- treatment consisted chiefly ol stimulation, and tbo raw ward whisky was used for thta purpose. On ouo occasion, In the dead of winter, I visited vis-ited the ward, and ordered an increased increas-ed ration of toddy for all the patients because of tie extreme cold. Thero were no &u4tablo means of heating the garret. Early the next mornnlg, fearful that disaster alight have overtaken over-taken my patients, I rose and struggled strug-gled to the hospital through a blinding blind-ing blizzard which had been ragln; since the afternoon before. On climbing climb-ing the last etops and opening the creaking door, I encountered a horrible horri-ble sight. My two nurses foid, debauched, de-bauched, penitentiary prisoners lay in a drunken stupor upon the floor. Snow had drifted in through the rifts In the rotten roof and lay in great white sheets about the room. It covered cov-ered the dirt. On ftome of the lwds it had been In part brushed away by the dying patients. On twelve beds . its surface1 was unbroken. The nurses had drunk their patients' liquor and during the nlht twelve victims had died." R. W. Bruere, in Harper'8 . Magazine. ' THE HOSPITALS OF FORTY YEARS AGO Even anion z professional philanthropists philan-thropists It is not generally realized how generally the phrase "scrap them" has nppU'd to our traditional methods meth-ods of disposing of the industrially J maimed and unlit. For many genera- |
