74 



THE ALUMNI JOURNAL, 



time until now it covers, I think, about 

 five acres of ground. The oldest hospital 

 in America is the Philadelphia Hospital, 

 which was established some time I think 

 in 1742, and the oldest hospital in this 

 city is the New York Hospital, which 

 was established in 1770, although there 

 had been hospital work before that time, 

 which I shall speak of a little later on. 

 But to give you some idea of the enor- 

 mous number of people who receive treat- 

 ment in the hospitals of this city I will 

 just quote a few statistics from the 1892 

 reports, and in those reports you will 

 find that the number of people who were 

 treated in the hospitals, which are under 

 control of the Board of Charities and 

 Corrections, alone was about 40,000 that 

 year, and as near as I can make out from 

 careful study of the reports of other hos- 

 pitals, about 30,000 received treatment 

 in hospitals more or less controlled by 

 private interests, and if you will add to 

 them the 250,000 people who received 

 free treatment in the dispensaries you 

 will find that about one-quarter of the 

 entire population of this city received 

 treatment in the hospitals and dispen- 

 saries. You take that amount from the 

 population of the city and then figure 

 that there is one ph5'sician to about 600 

 and you will have about 150 of those 600 

 that get free treatment, and you will find 

 that there are not a great number of peo- 

 ple to each physician in this city. But a 

 word now as to the expense. It costs 

 about $4,000,000 to run the hospitals of 

 this city, both public and private hos- 

 pitals, in round numbers about $4,000,- 

 000. The hospitals under the control of 

 the Board of Charities and Correction 

 consume about 30,000 barrels of flour a 

 year and that flour makes about 6,400,- 

 000 pounds of bread. Now some of you 

 women know what it would be if you had 

 to make all that amount of bread. But 

 that is the amount of bread made in the 



hospitals alone under the control of the 

 Board of Charities and Correction. But a 

 point that may interest some of you 

 young men more would be the fact that 

 at Belle vue Hospital, in the Outdoor 

 Department alone, they use about $20,000 

 worth of drugs every year, which is in 

 that one hospital with its Outdoor De- 

 partment about $20,000 to $25,000 of 

 drugs. So you can get an idea of what 

 the people are getting in a city like this. 

 Now, if we have the lights turned down 

 I think we will commence to show some 

 of the pictures. I have a large number 

 of pictures to show you, and I must has- 

 ten in order to get through with them 

 within the time allotted to me. I am 

 going first to show you a picture of the 

 famous old institution down in Twenty- 

 sixth street, known as Bellevue Hospital. 

 This is one of the great institutions of 

 this country — this building which you 

 see here. It was established in 1806, but 

 it was the outgrowth of some hospital 

 work begun between 1650 and 1700, and 

 at that time, in 1685, I think, but I am 

 not sure of the date, the population of 

 the city was 1,000. An enormous city, 

 wasn't it? 1,000 population ! But just 

 see how the city has grown. In 1731 

 there was an epidemic of smallpox in the 

 City of New York, and the people were 

 aroused to the necessity of having some 

 place to put those who were attacked by 

 the disease, and they built a hospital 

 down where the City Hall now stands, 

 and it had five beds. That was a great 

 work done at that time. A hospital was 

 established with five beds ! But in 1806, 

 DeWitt Clinton was made Mayor of the 

 City of New York, and he started to 

 make some reforms along this line (I 

 suppose he was a reform Mayor), and 

 they bought a piece of land in the locality 

 where Bellevue Hospital now stands, in 

 the locality known then as "Kipp's Bay 

 Farm," and it took in that section of 



