i 7 ,i Calderon: Obstetrics and Infant Mortality 23 
should cost approximately 200,000 pesos each, which would 
make a total of 1,600,000 pesos for the eight buildings. 
It seems just and natural that the provinces that will be 
directly benefited by the provisions of the above act should 
contribute their share in the cost of erection and maintenance 
of these hospitals. They should be expected at least to donate 
the land on which the hospitals will be erected. 
Taking the actual prices as the basis for our estimate, and 
adopting the Southern Islands Hospital at Cebu with its sixty- 
five to seventy patients daily as a type, the maintenance of each 
one of these proposed hospitals will be not less than 80,000 
pesos, which would mean a drain of 640,000 pesos a year on 
the Insular Treasury. 
It will not be difficult, however, to find a practical way of 
reducing each province’s share in the cost of maintenance of 
these hospitals. In the first place, each provincial board could 
be asked to defray the expenses of conducting the corresponding 
respective dispensary, for it is evident that the patients the 
hospital will be called upon to treat will come from every nook 
and corner of the province. The out-patient maternity depart- 
ment, which at any rate is not expensive, should be paid for 
by the municipality, in as much as its benefits will be practically 
monopolized by the expectant mothers of the locality. In order 
that the hospital may have its own resources, which it will use 
for defraying part of the expenses of its own maintenance, it 
will be advisable to fix a reasonable scale of fees, sufficient to 
cover lodging, board, and ordinary medical assistance, to be paid 
by patients admitted to the hospital, with the exception of the 
very poor, to whom no charge whatever should be made. 
This proposition is quite equitable, for it suits the local con- 
ditions as they obtain in the majority of our provinces where, as 
is well known, almost everybody owns his small piece of land, 
and can therefore afford to pay the reasonable hospital fees 
which will be demanded of him ; but the very rich, among whom 
the service must necessarily be better, should be required to 
pay higher fees. 
All the money derived from these different sources should be 
deposited in the provincial treasury and, together with what- 
ever might be contributed by the province and the municipality, 
will doubtless go a long way toward supporting the hospital and 
obviating the necessity of its depending entirely upon the ex- 
hausted resources of the insular treasury. Through such an ar- 
rangement the latter will be called upon to cover only whatever 
