Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 25.djvu/103

Rh is very large and appears to be increasing; at least 15,000 new cases of skin-disease occur in this city yearly among the poor, while there is no proper hospital accommodation for their care. In the matter of cancer the needs of the city are still more painfully evident. The malady is reported by the registrar-general to be on the increase in Great Britain, and the mortality from it has increased in New York of late years, according to the returns of the Board of Health, as may be seen from the following figures:

"In 1869 there were 304 deaths from cancer, being a little over one per hundred of deaths from all causes. In 1879 there were 572 deaths from cancer in this city, or a little over two per hundred of all deaths: that is, in ten years the proportion of deaths from cancer had nearly doubled, one death out of every fifty being from this dreadful disease. In 1880 there were 659 deaths from cancer, or 2·06 per cent of all deaths in this city; in this latter year cancer actually caused more deaths than scarlet fever, this being a very light year, with 618 deaths from this latter disease. In 1882 the mortality-tables showed 731 deaths from cancer in this city, or more than two daily. During these fourteen years 6,843 persons died of cancer in New York city. Patients suffering from cancer are welcomed in no hospital; in most institutions they are absolutely refused, and nowhere in this country are cancer cases grouped together with a view of studying the disease as to its nature and cure."

These painful facts show the urgency there was to take some serious steps toward the alleviation of this vast amount of suffering, and the New York Skin and Cancer Hospital has been established for this purpose. The institution was incorporated in 1882, and a dwelling-house was secured in 1883 at No. 243 East Thirty-fourth Street, where patients have been received and treated for the past year. The accommodations are, however, very limited, and so wholly insufficient that vigorous measures are now being taken for the extension of its operations until they shall become adequate to meet the public wants. Not only could but few patients be received, as the hospital now contains but twenty-nine beds, but serious difficulty has been encountered from the application of numerous cases of cancer for which the accommodations were wholly unsuitable. Some of these were in such advanced stages that their admission would have resulted in polluting the atmosphere to such a degree that the other beds could not be occupied. This experience has forced the managers to enter upon an enlarged plan of operations by which all patients, in whatever stage or condition of disease, may be taken for treatment without detriment to others.

A question may obviously arise as to the propriety of associating cancerous with skin diseases in the same institution; but the authorities of the hospital are well convinced that great advantages will ensue from this combination, and they have given the reasons for it in an