USA > Illinois > Cook County > Growth of Cook County; a history of the large lake-shore county that includes Chicago, Vol. I > Part 12
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21
Cook county is short of adequate hospital facilities. In 1957 and for a number of years prior thereto President Daniel Ryan and the other members of the county board were considering ways of raising funds for the construction of two additional buildings on the hospital grounds. One was to be a four-story, 500-bed addition to the main hospital building, and the other a new five-story out-patient clinic with a volume of 400,000 patient visits a year. This latter would replace the old and
167
inadequate Fantus clinic building which has a 200,000-patient- visit volume.
Operating heads of the county's institutions informed the county board early in 1957 that they needed a total of $70,- 000,000 to put their institutions in proper order.
President Ryan shortly thereafter appointed a 49-member special citizens advisory committee to study the requests. This committee, of which James A. Cunningham, investment banker, was chairman, decided the county could "get by" for the present with a minimum of $38,208,000.
The county board decided to ask the public to vote on bond issues totaling that amount at the June 3, 1957 judicial elec- tion. Included would be $10,000,000 for the 500-bed hospital addition.1
A vociferous group of objectors, however, threatened to cam- paign against the entire bond issue if the county constructed the 500-bed addition at County hospital instead of setting up a branch of County hospital on the "south side" of the city, as they desired.
Rather than jeopardize the entire rehabilitation program for all county institutions, President Ryan persuaded the board to eliminate the proposed $10,000,000 addition. The rehabilita- tion bonds were reduced to a total of $28,200,000, which amount was authorized at the public referendum. Of this, $12,800,000 was to be spent on County hospital improvements.
Economic And Social Problem
We mention here, because it is of social significance, that some 90 per cent of the babies born at County hospital are Negro. Among other patients at the hospital, the Negro per- centage is 56, statisticians say.
These high percentages are somewhat surprising when one
1. For many years officials proclaimed County hospital a 3400-bed institution, and that it was, but the number of beds occupying corridor space had been so reduced by 1958 that the institution then had but 3200 beds.
168
considers that the Negroes within the Chicago metropolitan area constitute but 16 per cent of the total population, accord- ing to statistics compiled in 1958 by the Chicago Association of Commerce and Industry.
The ever-mounting percentage of Negro patients at County hos- pital, observers believe, is due in part to the great influx into Chi- cago of Negroes from southern states in recent years. A large number of these newcomers, it has been pointed out, are from the more unskilled classes and, lack- ing skill, cannot command the better-paying jobs.
The fact that most of them pro- duce large families further lessens CHARLES F. CHAPLIN County Commissioner their ability to meet medical ex- penses. Also complicating the sit- uation is the fact that some private hospitals discourage the admission of Negroes, thereby increasing the load the county must carry.
Tho it may be true that wages and opportunities are greater in Chicago and other large northern cities to which the south- ern Negroes are flocking, it may take some years for many of these newcomers to become fully adjusted; in fact, it more likely will be their children who, having broader opportunities for learning trades and professions, will first reach the desired economic and social level their parents had envisioned.
This never-ending influx of southern Negroes also creates other problems in Chicago, major among which is the housing shortage, but that is another matter.
To operate such a huge hospital, Cook county in 1959 staffed it with 4,326 employes, and even then found itself short
169
of help. These employes were divided by numbers into the following classifications:
1,305 maintenance workers, office workers, and adminis- trators (This figure does not include those similarly employed at the Cook County School of Nursing.)
607 graduate nurses, including supervisors and instructors
123 student nurses from the Cook County School of Nursing
322 affiliating student nurses from other nursing schools 47 student graduate nurses
252 graduate practical nurses
113 student practical nurses
883 attendants and orderlies
135 medical interns
175 resident physicians
179 attending physicians and surgeons
185 associate physicians
The attending physicians are licensed practitioners, many of outstanding renown, who tho maintaining private practice, donate a certain number of hours each week, without compensa- tion to work in County hospital. They are chosen by rigid competitive examination and are appointed for six-year periods.
Associate physicians are appointed for one-year terms to assist the attending physicians and are not required to take civil service examinations.
Desirable Place To Intern
Because County hospital is so large and has such a diversity of cases, many of which are unusual ailments, young medical graduates consider it a great privilege to intern at the institu- tion. They, too, are chosen thru stiff competitive examination.
A major maintenance problem at County hospital is that of keeping the 21 buildings and their surrounding grounds tidy. Located within an 18-acre area, the buildings have within them an estimated 8,000 persons daily, except on visiting days
170
(Wednesdays and Sundays) when an additional 5,000 persons are present.
"Just picking up and cleaning up after them, especially on visiting days when we have about 13,000 persons around, is a sometimes discouraging job," commented Warden Hertwig recently. "I don't know why some people are so slovenly."
Cook County hospital is noted not only for its largeness, but also for its greatness, medically-wise. Many doctors who have practiced there have become world famous thru their contributions to the field of knowledge in both medicine and surgery. Medical advances made at County hospital shall be dwelt upon in more detail later, but first, let us go back to the beginning of Cook county's charitable activities when the frontier country and the practices of medicine were equally raw and primitive.
Free medical service was being rendered in the Fort Dear- born community even before Cook county was established, and several years prior to the incorporation of Chicago as a village.
The "hospital," if such it can be called, was none other than the fort, itself, and the doctors were those sent here by the United States army. Their primary objective, of course, was ministering to the troops garrisoned here, but the physicians then, as now, were charitable and did what they could for the handful of civilians, even those with no funds, who lived around the fort.
Dr. James Nevins Hyde (1840-1910) recounted in his book, Early Medical Chicago (Fergus Printing Co., 1879, p 15), the "first recorded" account of an early amputation in Chicago. It was performed in 1832 by Dr. Elijah Dewey Har- mon, then residing with his family in Fort Dearborn.
"A half-breed Canadian," wrote Dr. Hyde, "had frozen his feet, while engaged in the transportation of the mail on horse- back from Green Bay to Chicago.
171
"The doctor, assisted by his brother, tied the unfortunate man to a chair, applied a tourniquet to each lower extremity, and with the aid of the rusty instruments which he had trans- ported on horseback through sun and shower from Detroit to Chicago, removed one entire foot and a large portion of the other.
"Needless to say these were not the days of anaesthetics, and the invectives in mingled French and English, of the mail-carrier's vocabulary, soon became audible to every one in the vicinity of the stockade. It is gratifying to note that the first recorded amputation in Chicago was crowned with a most satisfactory success."
First Cook County Hospital
To answer the question, where was the first Cook county charitable hospital, one first must define what is meant by the term "hospital."
If one construes it to be a county-owned public building in which free medical treatment is rendered the indigent sick, then the almshouse or poorhouse erected on the public square in 1832, was the original County hospital.
To Dr. Hyde we again are indebted for the account of a major operation performed at this county poorhouse in those early days. In the aforementioned book, page 27, Dr. Hyde quotes the Hon. J. D. Caton, Chief justice of Illinois as saying:
"In 1838, a laborer on the canal near Lockport, fractured his thigh, and before the union had been completely effected, he came to Chicago on foot, where he found himself unable to walk further and quite destitute. He was taken to the poor- house where he grew rapidly worse."
The account further relates that the handful of Chicago doctors, most of whom were newly arrived, knew little of one- another's abilities, but finally designated one of their number to amputate the leg of the patient. The leg, accordingly, was removed-at the hip. Dr. Hyde said this is reported to have
172
been one of the first hip amputations in medical history.
Dr. Hyde added-and he appears not to have meant it as a grim joke-that altho the patient died a month later, "the operation was regarded as a success."
Before leaving the writings of the interesting Dr. Hyde, we would like to borrow another passage from his book, page 16, in which he quotes from an emigrants' guide, written in 1833, describing the nature of the Chicago populace at that time.
The emigrants' guide, according to Dr. Hyde, said that Chicago had "a doctor or two, two or three lawyers, a land agent and five or six hotel-keepers; these may be considered the stationary occupants and proprietors of the score of clap- board-houses around you; then, for the birds of passage, exclu- sive of the Potawatomies, you have emigrants, speculators, horse-dealers and stealers; rogues of every description, white, black, and red; quarter-breeds, and men of no breed at all; dealers in pigs, poultry, and potatoes, creditors of Indians; sharpers; peddlers; grog-sellers; Indian agents, traders and contractors to supply the Post."
As previously noted, the Cook county board, in the Chicago Daily Democrat. April 4, 1850 (Chicago Historical Society), listed county expenses over a period of years. In no column is the word "hospital" used, but one item, "pauper expenses," shows that for the remaining nine months of 1831, after the first county board took office, the "pauper" expense was $27.67; that by 1840 it had risen to $4,318.14, and by 1849 to $5,810.26.
From this it would appear that medical and other charitable expenses met by the county were grouped merely as "pauper expenses."
Hanging in the office of Warden Hertwig at the present County hospital is a historical plaque which says in part: "a County hospital was opened in Tippecanoe Hall on the corner of Kinzie and State streets, March 30, 1847." Similar
173
references also are to be found elsewhere.
County Hospital Number Two
That such a County hospital existed apparently is verified by an article which appeared in the April 6, 1847 issue of the Weekly Chicago Democrat, a copy of which has been preserved by the Chicago Historical Society.
This early-day article says, in part:
"In consequence of the increase of population, and of the great amount of sickness, during the past year, the accommo- dations at the county almshouse were found to be insufficient, and it became necessary to get a large number of sick persons boarded and taken care of at private houses in the city.
"This was necessarily attended with great expense, and to avoid this, as well as to secure better care, the public authorities determined to separate the sick paupers from the well ones, and employing the latter at the present almshouse, to provide for the former a hospital in the city.
"This would be absolutely necessary for those who are too sick to be transported far; and being supplied with good care and kept neat, clean and well ordered as a hospital should be, will be found, not only a saving of expense to the public, but an advantageous change for the poor.
"Accordingly they have rented a building on the north side of the river, and put it in order, and it is now ready, or nearly so, for the reception of the patients."
The same article points out that the Common Council (city council) was at that time considering turning the old Fort Dearborn garrison into a combined "city and county poorhouse and hospital," but was meeting with resistance from residents who objected having "miserable humanity" in the midst of the growing young city.
The article does not say that the "public authorities" who established the hospital north of the river were the members of the county board, but the statement that the "county alms-
174
house" was no longer sufficient lends credence to the pre- sumption that such authorities would at least include the board members.
Use of Tippecanoe Hall as a county hospital apparently was of short duration, however, for from Jan. 1, 1851 until Aug. 8, 1863 the county placed its sick in the Mercy hospital, 2537 S. Prairie Ave., at a cost to the county of $3 per week per patient.1
County Hospital Number Three
Dr. William E. Quine (see footnote) has written vaguely as follows:
"In August, 1863, the county transported its people from the Mercy hospital to Jefferson, and cared for them, together with later arrivals, in a building of its own and under its own administration, until Jan. 15, 1866. Dr. D. B. Fonda was in charge."
This hospital was one of the group of Cook county build- ings at Dunning, a small settlement in the country township of Jefferson and was some 12 miles northwest of down-town Chicago.
(The address today would be 6500 W. Irving Park road, in Norwood Park township, that township having been carved from the original Jefferson township. The remainder of Jef- ferson township now is within the city of Chicago. The Chi- cago State hospital, an institution for the mentally ill, now is located on those once-owned county grounds. As we shall see later, the county in 1851 had purchased a poor farm there and in 1855 began operating it as a poorhouse, insane asylum, and, in 1863, a hospital.)
1. Recounted in a paper "Early History of the Cook County Hospital to 1870" read Nov. 17, 1910 by Dr. Wm. E. Quine before a joint meeting of the Society of Medical History of Chicago and the Alumni Association of Cook County. (Published October, 1911 by the Society of Medical History, and now on file at the Chicago Historical Society.) Dr. Quine became a member of the County hospital staff in 1870, after having served his internship at the institution.
175
County Hospital Number Four
The hospital which Cook county next took over for its patients had been known, first, as City hospital, and later as Desmarres hospital. Its creation and operation had been of bizarre nature.
In the first place, according to Dr. Quine (his account has been verified in other sources), the structure, which was on Arnold street (now LaSalle) between 18th and 19th streets, was built in 1854-55 by the city as a temporary frame struc- ture for the isolation of cholera patients.
The city demolished it in 1856 and replaced it with a three-story brick building at a cost of $75,000. Meant to be a general hospital, it was completed in November, 1857, but was not put into use for two years, due to a conflict between the homeopathic and "regular" divisions of the medical pro- fession, each demanding its particular form of practice be followed.
To break the deadlock, the city in August, 1859, leased the hospital to a group of physicians and surgeons for five years, with the agreement the staff would treat city patients for a uniform fee of $3 per week. Members of the staff included Dr. George K. Amerman (1832-1867) and Dr. Joseph P. Ross, both of whom later became county commissioners.
With the Civil war in progress, the United States govern- ment took over the hospital in 1862, opening it as an army hospital on Oct. 29. The government changed its name to Desmarres hospital Aug. 23, 1864, and continued to operate it until Nov. 12, 1865. (During the latter portion of its ten- ancy, the army used the hospital solely for the treatment of eye and ear ailments of soldiers, which practice brought on much criticism from medical circles.)
In the meantime, Drs. Amerman and Ross, who had re- mained on the staff during the war, entered politics with a purpose in mind and were elected as members of the county
176
board of supervisors, now board of county commissioners. Soon thereafter (at the close of 1865) they prevailed upon their fellow board members to lease the hospital from the city.
Under the terms of the lease, the county merely exchanged for the use of the hospital the use of 160 acres of county-owned land just south of the then city limits. The land was needed by the city for a reform school. It was bounded by 40th st., Ellis ave., 43rd st., and Lake Michigan. Titles to the properties were not exchanged.
"One of the conditions on which the board consented to assume the administration of the hospital," Dr. Quine wrote, "was that the cost of maintenance should not exceed $10,000 for the year, a condition that was accepted with delightful alacrity by Amerman and Ross; but nevertheless, the cost of maintenance for the second year was $20,000, for the third year, $23,000, and for the fourth, $30,000, and doubtless it has kept on increasing ever since ... with the increase in the number of inmates and employes and the increase in the cost of living."
(Note: Dr. Quine was on the right track regarding trends in population and costs. In 1866, it will be remembered, the population of Cook county was around 265,000, but by 1959 had climbed to an estimated 5,000,000 or more, and County hospital costs were around $20,000,000 yearly.)
Thus at the beginning of 1866, Cook county had itself an- other hospital. Benjamin F. Chase, who had been warden of the county's hospital at Dunning was transferred to the new institution, and his wife was appointed "matron." On Jan. 12 Nils T. Quales, a medical student at Rush Medical college, having ranked highest in a competitive examination, was named the hospital's lone intern. A few days thereafter the patients from Dunning were transferred to the latest Cook County hospital.
The hospital then had 130 beds, but before long became
177
so over-crowded that in 1870 the county built a new wing onto it at a cost of $7,250. This added 90 beds. From 1866 to 1871, inclusive, admissions averaged 1,400 to 1,500 an- nually, Dr. Quine reported.
"Considering the time," Dr. Quine wrote, "the 'old county hospital' was a distinctly imposing structure.
"It was heated with steam, well lighted and ventilated, abundantly furnished, well supplied with modern conveniences, and delightfully wholesome from every point of view. Some years later it became infested with rats and roaches through lack of competent management, and the process of deteriora- tion thus begun was allowed to continue. It was always liber- ally supported by the county.
"In 1869 and 1870 the sewerage system was thoroughly renovated following the discovery of a break in the main conduit and the escape of tons of human excrement under the basement floor."
Famous Doctors At County Hospital
Numbered among the members of the hospital staff was Dr. H. Webster Jones, nephew of Daniel Webster, famous American statesman and orator.
Concerning Dr. Webster, Dr. Quine wrote: ". . . a most gracious, lovable, learned and talented man, an excellent teacher, and an inspiring counsellor, who was greatly beloved and admired by everybody, and by the pauper patients as well as by patients of princely wealth and station.
"I doubt if there ever has been an obstetrician in Chicago who has had anything like the clientele or the standing in professional and popular esteem that was possessed by H. Web- ster Jones."
Among the many who have received their medical training as interns at County hospital, none has become more famous than the world-renowned surgeon, Dr. Nicholas Senn (1844- 1908), after whom Chicago's Senn high school was named.
178
"There were giants in those days," wrote Dr. Quine, "and Nicholas Senn was one of the tallest of them all. No man has reflected greater glory on the Alumni Association of the Cook County hospital, or on the medical profession of America, than he. His career was the marvel of his generation."
Born in Switzerland, Senn, accompanied by his parents, came to America at the age of 10 and settled in Washington county, Wisconsin. In 1868 he received his medical degree from the Chicago Medical College and then interned for 18 months at County hospital. (This was County hospital, num- ber four, at LaSalle and 19th streets, as mentioned previously.)
Returning to Wisconsin, Dr. Senn practiced at Ashford and then at Milwaukee, in the latter location spending many a sleepless night in the basement of his office where he advanced his learning thru the dissection of numerous bodies, both animal and human.
Dr. Senn studied further at famous medical schools in Europe, in 1882 became professor of surgery in the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Chicago, and in 1888 became associated with Rush Medical College.
Dr. Senn published 23 books of renown on medicine and surgery; was an enthusiastic world traveler and explorer, and was the donor of many endowments to medical institutions. His written works, together with thousands of other medical volumes, now may be found in the medical reading room, fittingly called the Senn room, of Chicago's John Crerar Library.
Dr. Henry M. Lyman (1835-1904), a member of the medi- cal board of this LaSalle and 19th streets County hospital, and who served on the staff as "curator of the dead house," likewise has written a paper, read before the Cook County Hospital Alumni Association, in which he recounts some de- tails of the institution's operation.
"Everything was of the most primitive character," wrote
179
Dr. Lyman.1 "The warden was an ancient country farmer turned politician. The surgeons used their own instruments, and the physicians carried their own stethoscopes. There was a knife and a saw, a chisel and a mallet in the dead-house; and the interns contrived to keep a few test tubes and a little nitric acid in their rooms. But Dr. Ross (Joseph P. Ross, head staff physician) and the surgeons did lots of good work, and the hospital was always full of patients.
"Soon after opening the institution cholera invaded the city. It soon entered the hospital and took off one of the warden's daughters. Several other patients died with the disease, but on the whole we escaped very lightly. When the pestilence revisited the city in 1869 or '70, tho a number of cases were brought into the hospital, it did not spread among the other patients or inmates in the building."
The good Dr. Lyman, in the same bulletin, also recounted an incident in which he explained why one of the four staff surgeons at County Hospital No. 4 backed away from surgery and was content to just attend meetings of the medical board, of which he was a member. The gentleman was Dr. Charles G. Smith.
Concerning Dr. Smith, whom he termed "brilliant," Dr. Lyman said:
"The doctor was ... so busily occupied with private prac- tice that he could not give much time to hospital work. On one occasion he manifested some gleams of enthusiasm for genito-urinary and rectal surgery, and undertook to remove a large excrescence from ... a big Irishman who was suffering from . . . piles.
"Not considering it necessary to anesthetize the patient for such a trifling affair, he made the man lean over the back of
1. A Bit of the History of the Cook County Hospital. Henry M. Lyman, M. D. Bulletin of The Society of Medical History of Chicago, Vol. 1, No. 1, October, 1911. Chicago Historical Society.
180
a chair, and then began investigation ... The doctor was very near-sighted ... and buckled down close to business.
"But hardly was he ready to operate when his patient gave a yell and a kick, landing his foot square in the doctor's face, demolishing his spectacles and fairly upsetting his equilibrium. The operation had to be adjourned for want of spectacles and Dr. Smith concluded that a nominal connection with the staff would suit him better than active duty."
County Hospital Number Five
Because of Cook county's ever-growing population, its County hospitals, like its courthouses, seldom have been large enough, even when new, to fully meet the needs.
Thus it was in 1874, shortly after the great Chicago fire, with a building boom on and with more and more people converging upon the giant young metropolis and its environs, that the county board decided upon a new County hospital, on a new site-its fifth.
In that year the board purchased for $119,000 the west- side block bounded by Harrison, Wood, Polk and Lincoln streets, thereby creating a site that eventually was to become and still is the very medical center of the world.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.