THE BUILDING OF HOSPITALS. 



BY MOLLIS W. FIELD. 



[Hollis W. Field, author and editor; bom Williamsburg, Mo., April 10, 1865; edu- 

 cated in the public schools of Missouri ; began his career as a writer on the Kansas 

 City Times, and afterwards became city editor of the San Antonio Express; 

 removing to Chicago, he became connected with the Chicago Record, of which 

 paper he became editorial writer and Hterary editor; writer of many articles for 

 magazines and periodicals, chiefly on scientific and business topics.] 



Considering the building records of the civihzed world 

 to-day, it is one of the anomalies of these first years of the 

 twentieth century that one of the oldest institutions of man is 

 experiencing a distinctly boom period. 



More hospitals are building or in course of organization 

 and development in proportion to their numbers than there 

 are of any other one kindred institution in the educational or 

 religious world. The relation of the tubercle bacillus to con- 

 sumption and of the mosquito to yellow fever are the two 

 great stimulating discoveries leading to the hospital move- 

 ment of the present. 



It was the hospital method that free' Havana of yellow 

 fever after an unbroken record of 120 years' subjection to the 

 disease. It was the same hospital method, that, under super- 

 vision of United States authorities in Manila, reduced that 

 city's death rate to the rate credited to Washington, D. C. 

 Soap and water, vaccine virus, fire, and mosquito netting have 

 been the direct agencies for these accomplishments. Hospital 

 and sanitation have come to be sjmonymous in their meaning 

 to the medical profession, and to the practitioner the pos- 

 sibilities of careless infection are more to be considered to-day 

 than the chances of cure to the infected. 



Thus in a double sense the hospital boom is active. 

 Under modern conditions the sufferer is put into the hospital 

 ward for his own convenience and ease, while in many of the 

 contagious and infectious diseases he is there for the safety of 

 his fellow men. 



Fifteen hundred years before Christ the Egyptians had 

 hospitals for the care of the sick. Job is said to have main- 



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