USA > New York > New York and its institutions, 1609-1871. A library of information, pertaining to the great metropolis, past and present > Part 23
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The Institution is under the control of twelve directors, three of whom are elected annually by the members of the society and serve four years. Members are admitted on the annual payment of five dollars, or one hundred paid at one time, which entitles them to a voice at all meetings of the society, and to a preference in the benefits of the Hospital. In 1853 Mr. Touro, of New Orleans, increased the capital of the society by a donation of $20,000, and in 1863 two of the
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MOUNT SINAI HOSPITAL.
directors proposed to contribute $10,000 each, on condition that the Board should raise a permanent fund of $50,000, which was soon accomplished.
During the sixteen years of its operations, it has received 6,925 patients; about 5,500 of them have been restored to- health, and about 1,400 surgical operations have been per- formed. The design of the society, as set forth at its incor- poration, is to " afford surgical and medical aid, comfort, and protection in sickness to deserving and needy Israelites," but their charities have extended far beyond their own persua- sion. Many sick and disabled soldiers during the war were received and treated in their Institution. When in 1866 the city was threatened with cholera, a ward was prepared and promptly tendered to the Board of Health. Casualty patients have always been received and every possible alleviation afforded, often at considerable expense to the managers; and whenever a poor unfortunate has lost a limb by amputation, the directors have invariably procured him an artificial one. True to the instincts of their illustrious ancestors, they regard every man in distress a brother, and opening the tent door bid him welcome to the enjoyment of their hospitality. In their printed report they say, "The ear of the Hebrew is never deaf to the cry of the needy, nor his heart unmoved at the suffering of a fellow man, whatever be his creed, origin, or nationality." Several of the Jewish Rabbis give unwear- ied attention to the religious interests of their patients, and suffering Gentiles are allowed to receive visits from their own spiritual advisers. The Hospital contains a small synagogue. They also own a burial-place, and bury the dead without charge to the friends of the deceased.
The necessities of the public and the wants of the society some time since outgrew the capacity of their modest build- ing, which has never been able to accommodate over about sixty-five patients. Their surroundings have also sadly changed. At the time of opening the Hospital, the neighbor- hood was clean, airy, and quiet. But during the last few years the building has been surrounded by factories, brewer- ies, and workshops, whose steam-engines are puffing day and night, to the great annoyance of the patients, who sigh for quiet and rest. These factories have brought also a class of families that add greatly to the noise and filth of the neigh- borhood. In October, 1867, a steam boiler exploded within a hundred feet of the Hospital, and was thrown several hundred
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feet in the air, crushing a dwelling and some of the inmates in its descent. The concussion at the Hospital was terrible. The walls were shaken, windows shattered, and the panic among the poor patients indescribable. This occurrence set- tled the matter of removal, and the directors began to in- quire for a more eligible site. The Common Council granted them a lease of twelve lots situated on Lexington avenue, be- tween Sixty-fifth and Sixty-sixth streets, for ninety-nine years, at a nominal rent of one dollar per annum.
The corner-stone of the new Hospital was laid in the after- noon of May 25, 1870. After music by Eben's band, the Rev. J. J. Lyons offered an earnest and thoughtful prayer. Mr. Benjamin Nathan (since wickedly murdered), president of the society, after depositing the metal box containing the history of the movement and other documents in the stone, with an appropriate address, presented to Mayor A. Oakey Hall a silver trowel, which had upon one side of it a Hebrew inscription signifying House of the Sick, and on the other an inscription of gift, with the names of the officers and direct- ors. The Mayor, after congratulating the society and the city upon this new movement of charity, said :
"Other cities boast of peculiar and familiar titles descrip- tive of their inhabitants. There is the 'City of Brotherly Love,' as Philadelphia is called, and there is Brooklyn, 'The City of Churches ; ' but the city of New York proudly and gloriously boasts of being the great 'City of Charities.' It is therefore doubly appropriate that the Mayor of that city should be here, as it were, the high-priest of these ceremonies."
He then descended from the platform, and having placed himself near the stone, continued as follows :
" I now proceed to lay this corner-stone in the name of our common humanity ; in the name of the common mortal life to which we all cling; in the name of those ills of the body and the mind to which we are all subject ; in the name of universal mercy, which we prayerfully demand; and in the name of that universal death which we all reverently expect. And Jehovah grant that, as long as time endures, angels of compassion, with healing on their wings, may hover round the site of this Mount Sinai Hospital."
. After the stone had been lowered to its place the Mayor struck it several times with the gavel, and concluded the cere- mony by adding :
"Lie thou there, O corner-stone, and, according to the sen-
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MOUNT SINAI HOSPITAL.
tence of the noble prayer which has been offered here to-dar. mavest thou ever rest beneath the site of an hospital that shall be the shelter of suffering humanity, without distinction of faith."
An eloquent and appropriate address was then delivered by the Hon. Albert Cardozo, one of the justices of the Su- preme Court of the State of New York, from which we ex- tract the following paragraph :
" And now, from its foundation, I dedicate the beautiful edifice about to be erected on this spot to the charitable pur- poses for which it is designed. I dedicate it in the name of the union of these States-may both alike be perpetual !- whose theory of religious liberty and equality, faithfully maintained from the birth of the nation-may it never be violated !- has attracted so many to these shores, who have shed lustre upon our race, and who have repaid their adopted country for its protection by devoting treasure and talent, and life itself, to her interests.
"I dedicate it in the name of the State of New York-may the career of both be upward and onward in prosperity for- ever !- under whose parental and protecting care and benign influence and policy the Institution has thriven and grown, from insignificant and dependent infancy, until it has at- tained its present extended usefulness and proportions.
"I dedicate it in the name of the City of New York-cath- olic and profuse in its generosity towards all laudable objects -our pride, our home ; with which our dearest interests and hopes are identified, and for whose welfare our heartstrings vibrate with tenderest emotion and sensibility ; whose prog- ress in all that makes a city really great, while only keep- ing pace with our affection, has excited the admiration and amazement of the world, and provoked at times the envy of her less-favored sisters of both this and the old country; whose munificence towards this and all deserving charities marks her pre-eminent, as in everything else, for entire free- dom from bigotry, and for devotion to the cause of humanity and the sacred principle of religious liberty. And in the name of all these, speaking for those who cannot speak for themselves-for the helpless, the hapless, and, the forlorn- I invoke the aid of all to sustain this admirable charity and make the Institution a perfect and permanent success."
The work thus happily begun is being rapidly pushed for- ward, and the present autumn will probably witness the
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completion of one of the finest hospitals in our city. The building will front on Lexington avenue, extending across the entire block ; it will consist of a fine central edifice, with two wings, constructed of brick and marble, in the most ap- proved style of architecture. It is three stories high, besides basement and attic, with Mansard roof, heated with steam. will accommodate two hundred beds, and cost, in its construc- tion and furniture, $325,000. The subscription building fund amounts to nearly one hundred thousand dollars at this writing, the old hospital and grounds are expected to bring toward a hundred thousand when vacated, and the Institution has now a permanent endowment fund of another hundred thousand. The Charity Fair inaugurated on the 30th of No- vember, 1870, netted the Hospital the large sum of $101,645, besides the $35,000 appropriated to the Hebrew Orphan Asylum. Surely the Hebrews of New York are making an excellent record. May a kind Providence direct and save them !
BELLEVUE HOSPITAL.
(Twenty-sixth street, East river.)
HE Bellevue Hospital is one of the largest Institu- tions of its kind in the United States, and one of the noblest monuments of municipal charity in the whole world. In 1816 a stone building fifty feet by one hundred and fifty was erected at Bellevue, as a peniten- tiary for minor offenders. The same year the new alms- house was erected in close proximity to the latter, and in 1826 the Hospital was established near the two just described. The three Institutions, and over twenty acres of land, were en- closed with a stone wall, and became known as the Bellevue establishment. The opening of the House of Refuge in 1825, and the prison at Sing-Sing in 1828, furnished accommoda- tions for criminals, so that at the removal of the innates of the almshouse to Blackwell's Island, in 1848, the Hospital interest naturally took the entire, possession of Bellevue. The old almshouse, constructed of blue-stone, is now the
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HET ENDING AND REMOVING DEAD BODIES AT THE MOROCK.
BODIES AT THE MORGUE AWAITING IDENTIFICATION AND REMOVAL.
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central edifice of the Hospital. Various changes and addi- tions have been made from time to time, until the buildings now present a continuous line of three hundred and fifty furt, all four stories high, the central one crowned with a lofty observatory. The Hospital contains thirty-five wards, and has space for about twelve hundred patients. The ceil- ings are now considered too low and the ventilation quite defective, yet every improvement possible for the comfort of the patients is made. The Hospital is heated throughout with steam, the cooking and washing being performed by the same agent, and the apartments are all lighted with gas. Each building has a piazza with external iron staircases, affording pleasant exercise to convalescents, and ample means of escape in case of fire.
In the basement of the main building are kept the drugs, the Hospital clothing, and much of the provision stores. Here is also the printing office of the commissioners. The side walls of the wide entrance way of the first floor present on the one hand the stone on which George Washington stood when he took the oath of office as first President of the United States. The stone is appropriately inscribed. On the opposite side the commissioners have placed a beautiful inscription in white marble, to the memory of Dr. Valentine Mott, so long regarded as the chief ornament of the medical fraternity of New York. The office of the warden and the business room of the commissioners are found on the first floor, and on the second are private apartments for the war- den, engineer, apothecary, and matron. The third floor con- tains similar apartments for the resident physicians and surgeons ; while the fourth contains the operating theater, surrounded with circular seats raised in the form of an am- phitheater, with space for several hundred students. This floor contains also the library, and the consultation room. The surgical instruments formerly kept here have been re- moved to the first floor, and placed with other curiosities in a large room adjoining the entrance hall. They are all placed in charge of one person, who is held responsible for their condition. The attic contains the tanks from which hot and cold water is distributed through the building. The Ilospital has recently been furnished with spring beds, which, besides lessening the labor, adds greatly to the comfort of the patients. The museum is being steadily enriched with speci- mens of morbid anatomy, illustrating nearly every variety of
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disease. The Hospital is placed under a medical committee of inspection, who examine it weekly, making such recom- mendations as they think proper.
This Hospital, as all know, is a municipal institution, con- trolled by the Commissioners of Charities and Correction. Hence all sick poor are entitled to treatment free of charge.
A surgeon is detailed to examine all applicants, and if they require continuous medical treatment he assigns them to their appropriate ward in the Hospital; if the illness is slight, they are sent to the Bureau of Out-door Sick. An average of seven or eight thousand are treated annually in this Hospital, about ten per cent. of whom die; a large part of the deaths occur, however, among infants and casualty patients. Though the patients are nearly all paupers, the surgeons employed are second to none, and the treatment throughout is the best science can afford.
The bodies of the dead, unless taken away by their friends, are interred in the City Cemetery on Hart Island.
As a school of clinical instruction, Bellevue ranks among the first in the world. The students of all medical schools in the city are granted admission tickets, and several hundred are in constant attendance.
In 1866 the commissioners added the Medical and Surgi- cal Bureau for the Relief of the Out-door Poor, which is manned by a large corps of physicians, who treated over 17,000 patients the last year. During the same year a building, similar to the famous Morgue of Paris, was constructed, as a temporary receptacle for the exhibition and identification of the unknown dead. The body is stretched upon a table so that it can be viewed through a glass ceiling day and night for seventy-two hours. If not identified, a minute descrip- tion of the person is recorded, a picture taken, and the gar- ments worn are still kept on exhibition for twenty or more days. A convenient room has been added to this building for the deliberations of the coroners. During 1869 there were received at the Morgue 149 bodies, 70 of whom were recognized by friends, and 79 not identified.
Several acres of ground are still connected with the Hospi- tal. The yards are finely cultivated and add greatly to the beauty and healthfulness of the Institution.
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THE NURSERY AND CHILD'S HOSPITAL.
(Lexington avenue and Fifty-first street.)
Among all the woes of this sorrowful world, perhaps none are more touching to consider or record than those endured by helpless, speechless childhood. If early years are well supplied with the appliances of life and culture, the priva- tions, exposures, and tempests of later years may be tri- umphantly borne; but neglect and misfortune in the morn- ing of life, if not instantly fatal, may so extend their shadows as to sadden and ruin a noble existence. Many causes conspire to afflict childhood. Death robs many a bright- eyed child, in the earliest dawn of its existence, of her whose love and care can never be supplied. Its father may be at that instant on the Indian Ocean, in Asia, or on the Rocky Mountains. Poverty may drive the mother to give the food nature provided for her own infant to that of another; thus, to save herself from starvation, she half starves her child. Some mothers are insane, and some suffer with lingering illness, and are themselves conveyed to hospitals. Add to these the numberless illegitimate births, where shame for
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past crimes leads to the commission of another for its con- cealment, and we gain a faint conception of the ills the race encounters at the threshold of its existence. Reflections of this kind, particularly those of wet-nurses, compelled by want of subsistence to neglect their own babes and care for others, led to the founding of the "Nursery and Child's Hos- pital." And is it not eminently fitting that woman, to whom God in His providence has committed the race, and to whom He has given the finest susceptibilities for its culture, should be the founder and manager of this worthy Institution ? Early in 1854 Mrs. Cornelius Du Bois, whose mind had become thoroughly imbued with this subject, undertook to interest her friends and the public in behalf of the infant children of the poor, and so successful were her endeavors. that on the 1st of March, less than a month from the time of beginning, a society was organized, with $10,000 subscribed to commence the enterprise. On the first day of the follow- ing May a building was opened in St. Mark's place, which . was so soon filled that it was found necessary to add the house adjoining; but, the pressure for room still continuing, a more eligible building was secured on Sixth avenue, where the society carried on its work for two years.
The original intention was to provide a nursery for the infants of laboring women, and others deprived by any cause of their mothers. The design was to provide for healthy children, but unfortunately disease is not slow to march through the tender ranks of childhood, and it soon became apparent that, in order to the successful maintenance of a nursery, a hospital with physicians, nurses, and all need- ful appliances must be added. Every week the number of applications increased, and the managers soon became con- vinced that the limits hitherto assigned to their undertaking were not commensurate with the wants of the city, and that . their borders must be greatly enlarged.
This could not be done without money. An application to the city authorities finally secured the permanent lease of a lot of land one hundred feet square on Fifty-first street, be- tween Lexington and Third avenues. The Legislature was appealed to in 1855, and again in 1857, and the sum of $10,000 was granted to aid in building. Several public entertainments and many private donations so swelled their building fund that they were permitted, in May, 185S, to complete a fine three-story brick building, at a cost of
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THE NURSERY AND CHILD'S HOSPITAL.
§28,000. The main building is sixty feet deep, with a front of one hundred and nineteen feet, with two wings of twenty- seven and forty feet, respectively. Up to this period no ille- gitimate children were admitted, but the large numbers they were compelled to refuse induced a deeper study into the necessities of these most wretched of all infants. The late Isaac Townsend, then one of the governors of the almshouse, was led to the careful consideration of the same subject, and came to the same conclusion, viz., that a foundling hospital should be established in New York.
In 1858 the Common Council appointed a select committee to examine and report on the expediency of founding such an Institution. The committee carefully examined the sub- ject, conferred with eminent physicians, collected statistics, and reported in favor of such a Hospital. Their report showed that in one week, out of 503 deaths, no less than 107, or thirty- five per cent., were under one year of age, 54 being returned as still or premature births. But these published bills of mortality could not guess at the hundreds and thousands of cases known only to certain women and their physicians.
The annual report of the Police Department, the observa- tions of thoughtful medical advisers, and others, proved that infanticide had become a widespread and appalling crime in American cities, and extended from the marble palace of Fifth avenue to the dingiest hovel on the island. It was believed that the establishment of foundling hospitals in the principal cities of Europe had prevented the extensive practice of child-murder in those countries. As early as 1670, Louis XIV. placed the Foundling Hospital of Paris on a common footing with the other hospitals of the city; and in 1778 a lying-in asylum was established by Marie Antoinette. In 1739 Thomas Coram founded the London Foundling Hospital, which has since been recognized as one of the most useful charities of England. In our country villages and towns, where every one is known, infanticide is believed to be rare ; hence, many indiscreet girls and women, on pretence of a visit or an offered situation, have in the seclusion of a great city sought concealment, and there blackened their souls with in- fanticide. The statistics gathered in one instance showed that; out of 195 cases, only 37 belonged to the city. Many young girls are annually thrust from the homes of their parents on the discovery of their sad condition, some of whom enter as a last resort dens of infamy to run a brief career of crime, which
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terminates in an awful death; while others, whose desire for concealment is stronger than for life, are drawn from the water by our policemen, and described by the coroner. Through the unceasing exertions of Mrs. Du Bois, aided by the Common Council, a foundling hospital or "Infant Home " was erected in 1861.
It was a model building of its kind, constructed of brick and freestone, with three stories above a high basement, fronting on Lexington avenue, at the corner of Fifty-first street, and a little removed from the original Nursery and Hospital. About the time of its completion, yielding to the pressing demands of the hour, it was surrendered to the sick and disabled soldiers, who occupied it four years, but at the return of peace it was restored to its founders, and appropri- ated to the uses for which it had been erected. In October, 1865, it was formally opened for the reception of inmates.
Great inconvenience was experienced still for want of suffi- cient room, and from the separation of the two buildings. This led the enterprising managers, in 1868, to erect, at an expense of over thirty-one thousand dollars, a third building, covering the vacant space between the two former, the base- ment of which contains a play-room for the children, the rest being largely appropriated to a lying-in asylum. The build- ings are now entirely completed and paid for. They contain fourteen wards, besides suitable school, dining, and play rooms, and other needful apartments. The aim of the society is not to encourage vice, but to prevent it. Hence females seeking admission are required to furnish certificates from re- sponsible parties, stating that until recently they have sustained virtuous characters. It opens its doors for the relief and re- covery of unfortunates who have no other refuge in the wide world. Each woman admitted is required to nurse and care for one child besides her own, and if her child dies, to nurse two during her stay. On leaving she receives a certificate of recommendation from the managers and house physician, which usually secures her a good situation. Children under six years of age are received, for which the parent is ex- pected to pay ten dollars per month for an infant, seven dollars for a child who can walk, and nine dollars for a hospital or sick child. The great majority, however, pay nothing .. The . city authorities now pay five dollars per week for every indi- gent lying-in woman, and five dollars per month for each child when nothing can be obtained from the parent.
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During the year closing with March, 1870, 108 intants were born in the Hospital, and the inmates averaged about three hundred and fifty, two-thirds of whom were children. The expenditures of the Institution during the same time amounted to $55,241. During the last year 116 infants were born in the Institution, 1,083 persons cared for, and 43 wet nurses provided with situations. The servants sometimes find an infant placed at the door of the Institution in the early hours of the morning, and others are left by heartless mothers who never call for them. These are kept and in- structed until they are eight or ten years of age, when they are adopted into good families. The infants are fed con- densed milk, preparations of barley, etc., and as they advance eggs and other solid articles of diet are added. An able board of physicians give much time to the care of the sick, and the Institution is watched over night and day by an experienced matron, Mrs. Polman, who possesses rare fitness for the critical position. An annual ball is held in behalf of
the Institution. This questionable method of sustaining a worthy charity has nevertheless proved eminently successful, as the managers have realized $10,000 or $15,000 from each. thus drawing large sums from the voluptuous public, which lacks the principle to give until entertained with some frivo- lous amusement. On the 4th of July, 1870, the Society opened on Staten Island a country nursery, for the benefit of the sickly children of the Institution, at an expense of $50,000. The Legislature of 1870 gave $25,000, and in 1871 added the other $25,000, thus fully equipping this country retreat for these infant sufferers. The society is now thor- oughly furnished for its undertaking, and will doubtless run & long and useful career. The Institution is Protestant, but not denominational.
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