Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 85.djvu/106

102 suppression of disease and the improvement of health. Of special interest is the New General Hospital at Cincinnati, for we have there the only instance in the country of a municipal university and hospital, conducted by and for the city. A medical school and hospital, cooperating in their common work and directly controlled and supported by the city, is an example which we may expect to see followed elsewhere. One may therefore note with satisfaction the admirable plans of the Cincinnati Hospital indicated in the accompanying bird's-eye view, kindly given us with some description by Dr. Christian R. Holmes, dean of the medical school and president of the new hospital commission.

The hospital will be opened in October, 1914, with 850 beds, but all administrative buildings have been built large enough to care for 1,500 patients. The buildings are located on a plot of 27 acres; adjoining this on the west and north are 38 additional acres, also belonging to the hospital, for future expansion and to be used for day camps for children or adults needing sunshine and outdoor life under medical supervision, also night camps for men with incipient or arrested tuberculosis, who are still bread winners, for, while located on high land in one of the suburbs, the grounds are easy of access.

The admitting department and outdoor clinic, surgical pavilion, kitchen and service building are located on the long axis of the group, to be easy of access from all the pavilions, and being low structures do not interfere with light and air. All the buildings (except the contagious group) are united by large well-lighted basement and first-story corridors. A patient can be taken on a wheeled stretcher all over the twenty-seven acres through the basement corridors without the use of inclines, steps or elevators.

The administration building (No. 1) contains an extensive working and reference library for the staff and students and a lecture hall suitable for meetings of various kinds, but especially for medical societies. The City thus shows its appreciation of the free service that the medical profession renders to the city's poor, by furnishing a meeting place, where not alone the staff, but every physician in the city can come and have the advantages that only a well equipped teaching hospital can furnish. They need not confine their meetings to this hall alone; use can be made of the large amphitheater where will be placed powerful projecting lanterns and every facility for demonstrations. Ox they may meet in the amphitheater of the spacious pathological building where the professors of pathology and bacteriology can give demonstrations of specimens saved specially for such meetings. Thus the hospital may be made the city's center for medical education, not limited to the staff, the students and internes.

Adjoining the administration building is the admitting department and Outdoor Clinic where students can see every variety of emergency, medical, obstetric and surgical cases. They can also follow up and see final results in those who have recovered sufficiently to leave the hospital, but return as out-patients for treatment until entirely cured. The basement of the admitting department is well lighted by wide areaways. Every patient's clothing passes through the large sterilizer located here, and then goes to the tailor-shop to be cleaned, mended and pressed before being stored away; there is also a large sunstroke and poison room here with every modern facility for treating such cases. On the main floor of the admitting department and the Outdoor Clinic in addition to the examination and treatment rooms, we have two wards—one for each sex, where patients who arrive after 9:00 are kept till the next morning, in order not to disturb the ward patients. The social service department will have its office in this building. The ambulance or any public conveyance will bring the ordinary cases to the front of the building,