The Medical Missionary College Hospital in Chicago
We moved last fall, as you know, to a double building at the corner of Thirty-third Place and Cottage Grove Avenue. In the basement of this building we have treatment rooms, where we give all forms of hydriatic treatments, including the various hot and cold sprays, also electric-light baths, galvanism, etc. On the other side of the house we have our dining room and kitchen. On the first floor are the reception room and two large wards for men. These rooms are light and airy. Across the hall on the other side of the house are the class rooms for students. On the second floor we have three large rooms for women, with one small special operating room. These wards are nicely fitted up, as are also the men’s wards on the first floor. In these rooms are held devotional services each morning. On the third floor we have, on one side, rooms for nurses, and on the other side of the building is the operating room. This operating room is fitted up for all kinds of surgical work, and adjoining it is the laboratory, where we are prepared to do all necessary kinds of chemical work.
We have a well-equipped medical staff, and a good corps of nurses. We wish to interest all our friends in this hospital, for although it is reasonably well filled,17yet, in consideration of the work that it does, it ought to be filled to overflowing all the time. By securing outside rooms for nurses, we could readily enlarge our wards, and so do a larger work with but little additional expense.
The cost of keeping a patient in this hospital is about one dollar a day. Some think that this is a little dear, but at that price, if the building were well filled with beds, the money received would not fully pay expenses. I have been interested in looking up the actual expense of caring for patients in other hospitals in this country, and also in Europe. The East London Hospital has several hundred free beds, but the expense, which is maintained by donations, amounts to one dollar and thirty cents a day for each patient. At St. Luke’s Hospital, for every free patient they have to supply ninety-eight cents a day. In the Cook County Hospital, the largest hospital in the city of Chicago, it costs ninety cents a day for each patient, and this does not include any salaries for the medical attendant, except perhaps the superintendent.
Some think that it is hardly right to charge people operation fees. Personally, I take more satisfaction in performing operations that I do not get a cent for than in some that the institution is reasonably well paid for. The true surgeon has just as much anxiety for those who do not pay a single cent for the work, as for those who have paid well for their operations. Some of our hardest cases have been those who have paid nothing.
Operations can never be paid for in dollars and cents. We ought not to look upon what is paid for them as fees. When a doctor or several doctors take a patient that requires a difficult surgical operation to restore him to health, and put him under the influence of chloroform, such responsibility cannot be paid for in dollars and cents. Sometimes there is great anxiety afterwards as to whether the patient will get along well or not; there is always more or less anxiety. All these things must be taken into consideration, and such worry and sleepless nights have no financial equivalent.
It is well for those who can to pay for their operations, for they cost something. A surgeon frequently uses a dollar’s worth of silk in sewing up wounds on one patient. We have one trained nurse in our hospital who puts in all her time preparing expensive dressings to be used in dressing wounds in the operating room and wards. All these cost money. Surgical instruments are particularly expensive. Sometimes a short piece of surgical string costs ten cents. Thus it is evident that it is right for us to encourage people to pay something for their surgical work. Suppose a man has twenty cows; is it worth the price of one of these to have an important operation performed? But we do not turn away those who cannot pay anything.
It would take only a little effort on the part of the home church to raise a dollar a day to keep one of their poor sick ones in our hospital, and it would lift a heavy load from our already overloaded shoulders. Twenty or thirty dollars from a good-sized church is scarcely felt by them, and the money is a great help to us. However, we take just as good care of those who themselves do not pay, and for whom no money is raised by a home church, as we do for those who do pay; for we are not working for money.
About six or eight weeks ago, while on my way to meet an appointment, I stopped at a house to see a woman who had been neglected, and was near death’s door. She had blood poisoning in one ankle, and it was a fearful-looking sight. She was in need of immediate help, and the result was that I had to miss my meeting to care for her. This woman not only had blood poisoning, but she was also addicted to the use of morphine—had been using it for twelve years. This had so lowered her vital activity that she could scarcely react to the treatments, and so hung between life and death for three or four weeks, with no noticeable improvement. It was a discouraging outlook, and I expected every morning to find that she had died during the night. But we brought her to the hospital, and gave her the most thorough treatment day and night, and finally in one corner of the wound we saw evidence of healing; so we took courage. She has kept on improving slowly, until now she is able to sit up in a chair, and it is only a matter of a short time until she will be in health. For this case we have not received a single penny.
One man came to us with a terrible ulcer, as large as two hands, on his leg. He had suffered with it for seventeen years, but a few months’ treatment effected a complete cure. He went home a happy man. A few months ago one of our nurses brought in a man who had been shot in the arm, and was in a dangerous condition. He was not a converted man. Before the operation, we had our customary season of prayer. About two weeks later it became necessary to perform a second minor operation. Some of his friends were present, and before the operation one of them took a bottle of whisky out of his pocket, and handed it to the patient, saying, “Wouldn’t you like to take something to brace you up for the operation? Perhaps the doctor would like some?” The man said, “You just wait; you will soon see where he gets his bracer.” That man has become our sincere friend through this kindness, and his employers, who are influential people in the city, have become deeply interested in our work.
Our medical missionary students are working hard to become well-qualified to do medical work. We trust that there is a beginning of a master workman in each of them. Two desire to go to Egypt as soon as they graduate; others have various mission fields in view. Our medical college is not doing either small or cheap work. It is doing thorough-going, practical work in both scientific and Christian lines. Just encourage some of the bright young people with whom you come in contact, those who are capable of making good missionary physicians, to come in our school. We have teachers who are well qualified for their work, and have a standing in the medical profession. Our students have this advantage over other medical students, they are constantly associated with others who possess similar missionary aspirations. Our medical school is growing, it must grow; for it has a field in the world,—a great field. It is as necessary to educate medical missionaries as it is for us to educate ministers.