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Transcribed and submitted by Linda Talbott
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Fourteenth Biennial Report of the
Board of State Commissioners of Public Charities
of the State of Illinois
Presented to the Governor December 1, 1896


         [p. 81-82]
         
         COOK COUNTY
         - Hospital -
         
         The charitable work demanded of Cook county is so vast as
       compared with that demanded in any other county of the State
       that here the county almshouse has been differentiated into a
       county hospital, with an average of 1,000 beds, a detention
       hospital for the insane, an infirmary and an insane asylum.
         Following is the report of the Cook County Hospital for 1895:
         
       Patients on hand January 1, 1895. . . . . . . . . . . . .794
       Number of patients admitted to Hospital . . . . . . . 14,861
                                                             ------
                                                                     15,655
       Total number cared for. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13,629
       Number of patients discharged . . . . . . . . . . . .  1,194
                                                             -------
                                                                     14,823
                                                                     -------
       Total number remaining in hospital January 1, 1896. .            832
                                                                     -------
                                                                     -------
       Average number of beds. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .          1,000
       
                        MATERNITY WARD
       Births  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .            395
       Deaths - infants (includes still-born). . . . . . . .             64
       
       
       HOSPITAL.
       As regards the Cook County Hospital the board renews its former
     suggestion that medical students be allowed upon the wards. During
     the last year there have been repeated instances of gross miscon-
     duct and neglect of patients upon the part of certain doctors, and
     there is at all times a laxity of attendance upon the part of staff
     physicians, from which the patients suffer, being left as they are
     to the care of internes. This great free hospital contains a desti-
     tute population as evidenced by their presence here. Their sickness
     and helplessness certainly compel sympathy, and we have no doubt that
     it was with a view to the protection of the patients that the old
     practice of bedside teaching was discontinued in this hospital.
     
       Free hospitals are found in all great cities of the civilized
     world and they are everywhere open to bedside teaching, and in con-
     sequence enjoy the services of the most distinguished physicians and
     teachers of medicine in their respective cities. It seems plain that
     the theory that the free patient shall repay society by giving oppor-
     tunity to students of medicine results in the patient obtaining the
     service of the most eminent men in the medical profession, while the
     other plan now followed by Cook county leaves the wards closed to
     students and thereby deserted by their teachers, and the patients
     abandoned to the mercy of untrained fledglings in the medical pro-
     fession or to physicians whose appointment may be due to some other
     cause than fitness. In situation, equipment, buildings and nursing
     force this hospital is all that can be reasonably demanded.
     
       In the opinion of this Board the usefulness and efficiency of the
     Cook County Hospital would be greatly enhanced if it were superintended
     by competent medical men. Medical skill is required in the housing,
     feeding and clothing of patients just as much as in the prescribing
     of drugs. Private pay hospitals are in their every detail managed
     by medical men, and public opinion demands not less in the care of
     the poor whom the public assume to treat when ill. It is not a fair
     charge to make against the profession of medicine, whose members
     embrace those well known to be the most humane and gentle of men,
     that the admission of students upon wards of a hospital would result
     in unkindness or maltreatment of patients, for their lives are devoted
     not only to relieving and healing the ills of the race but to the pre-
     vention of disease as well.
     
       The Board unqualifiedly believes that the admission of students
     to the wards in small groups, in company with the attending physi-
     cian or surgeon, would be of benefit to the patients, and submits
     that the medical man is the best judge of how and when such visits
     are made.
     
       We renew our suggestion that some provision for convalescents
     other than Dunning be afforded. It is our belief that many a self-
     respecting man or woman is turned into a pauper by being sent from
     the County Hospital to Dunning for convalescence.
     
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