Page:1883 Annual Report of the German Society of the City of New York.djvu/51

Rh and, whenever possible, have made room in their institution for such patients of the Society as were absolutely in need of hospital attendance.

About two thirds of our patients are afflicted with incurable chronic diseases. For such patients there is no institution in New York, and thus the poor Germans among the exceedingly numerous class of patients of this kind come under the treatment of our physicians only when their condition makes it impossible for them to leave the house. In such cases the physicians can of course only act more as comforters and advisers to the patients and their families, than as therapeutists — a difficult and often ungrateful task. The relatively large death-figure in the medical reports is explained by this statement.

Such cases of illness are the more serious that they are all, in fact, in the most urgent need of hospital care. To replace the latter as much and as efficiently as possible, is the task of our physicians. They visit the patients as often as necessary, and prescribe for them, at the expense of the Society, the requisite medicines. In the treatment of such patients our physicians encounter difficulties which it is possible to remove only partially. The badly ventilated, often very dirty sickroom, which frequently serves at the same time as bedroom and sitting-room, as well as the kitchen of the whole family, cannot be changed to an airy, clean apartment. What can be done is done, but it is very little. It is different with regard to food. In order to insure success to the treatment, appropriate nourishment is indispensable, and often even the means for that are wanting. It is just the poorest German families in the city whom our physicians visit, and hence it is no rare occurrence that they find two, three, or even four very sick patients lying in one room. In such cases the physicians give a written order for pecuniary assistance, and the sums expended in that way are decidedly those which do the most good; by the purchase of meat, milk, and bread they often work apparent miracles, for not only is hunger allayed, but the recovery of the patient is effected—in spite of the greatest weakness—by the more nourishing food. Without