Page:U.S. Department of the Interior Annual Report 1877.djvu/51

Rh The buildings of the institution are within a few weeks of entire completion, and their cost will be within the amount of the estimates and appropriations.

The current expenses of the institution have amounted during the year to $53,292.31, and there has been expended on buildings the sum of $39,987.76.

In the estimates submitted, beside the usual amount for current expenses, $5,000 is asked for furnishing and fitting up the new building, including a small amount for repairs on completed portions of the buildings, and $10,000 for the inclosure, improvement, and care of the grounds of the institution.

The directors urge that these amounts be appropriated so as to be available during the current fiscal year, since the early completion of the improvements contemplated is very important.

During the year, 763 patients were treated in the hospital and asylum.

Of this number, 500 were admitted during the year, 365 were discharged — 265 cured and 100 relieved — and 109 died, leaving 277 patients under treatment in the hospital June 30, 1877. Over three thousand prescriptions were dispensed to the poor, and medicines and medical attendance were furnished from the hospital, when needed, to the inmates of the Colored Orphans' Home — 115 in number. Subsistence was provided for 25 of these, who are included in the aggregate number in the hospital.

The proportionately large number of deaths is attributed by the surgeon-in-chief to the character of the cases received, many of them being such as had reached an incurable stage before admission, owing to their want of means to procure proper care and medical treatment, and to the fact that of the 500 admissions, 50 were for treatment for consumption; a disease which almost necessarily proves fatal in this class of patients.

During the year, 627 women were under treatment at this hospital, of which number 240 were in the hospital and 387 received treatment in the dispensary. Five hundred and ninety-one patients were received during the year. Of the whole number treated, 302 were cured. 132 relieved, 3 died, 43 were transferred, and the results of 107 cases are unknown, leaving 40 cases under treatment at the close of the year — 24 in the hospital and 16 at the dispensary.

During the year ending June 30, 1877, 942 persons were treated in the Government Hospital for the Insane, being an increase over the
 * IV——I