Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 9.djvu/767

Rh private charities annually in the city of New York, a city of 1,000,000 inhabitants. A considerable portion of this sum is expended on the hospitals, which alone contain more than 6,000 beds, not including insane or other asylums, but only institutions known by the name of hospitals. About 4,000 of the 6,000 beds are in public city or State hospitals, the remaining 2,000 being in hospitals supported by voluntary charity. The official reports of the thirty-odd free dispensaries give 307,060 as the number of patients applying for and receiving treatment in 1875 at the dispensaries, against 20,631 treated at their homes.

To say that $10,000,000 are expended in charities, that there are 6,000 free beds in the hospitals, and that over 300,000 persons receive medicine and medical advice free of cost at the dispensaries, is certainly evidence of the generosity and Christian spirit of charity that prevail. But, when looked at in a direct, practical way, these figures show something else. If these official reports are to be relied upon, then, in a population of 1,000,000, over 300,000 persons receive alms every year. We doubt if the number of individuals is so large, for it is the custom of some dispensaries to count each visit a patient makes as a patient treated. But the actual number is immense, and increasing out of all proportion to the increase of population. The truth is, the majority of our hospitals, as they are at present managed, are liable to do more harm than good. Apparently they do much good, and for the time do relieve suffering and want, but in the end may do much harm. Giving help too readily even during sickness is hurtful, and when it is offered freely without the certain knowledge that it is really needed, it very naturally removes the healthful stimulus of necessity, the dread of which prompts every individual to provide for the misfortune of sickness.

The dispensaries as they are now managed are nothing less than a promiscuous charity, exactly similar to the notorious "soup-kitchen"—medicine being substituted for soup. They offer to the ignorant and poor an easy and ever-ready inducement to take alms. They are the first stepping-stones to the degradation of pauperism. The self-respect of an individual is injured the moment he accepts alms, and a habit of taking alms invariably tends to a complete loss of self-respect and consequent degradation. It matters but little whether alms be medicine or food, the principle remains the same. The hungry must be fed; but we know that, instead of continuing to feed the hungry, and gradually destroying their power to help themselves, it is infinitely better to teach them how to help themselves and seek out and remove the cause that induced the miserable condition of helplessness. For exactly the same reason, would it not be better to teach the poor how to avoid getting sick, and by every means in our power remove the causes that induce disease among them, rather than to offer them the best care and attention without being sure that