pital looking for the interest of the single patient only might just as
well be a private institution, a maison de santé for the benefit of a
landlord. The benefit derived from hospital treatment by a sick person is not all the satisfaction due to a public who pay four hundred
dollars a year for every bed. Nor are the public paid sufficiently for
their sacrifices by the accumulated experiences of a few physicians, who
enjoy the large field of observation and the opportunity of utilizing it
for the benefit of private patients. Every hospital which neglects to
increase the stock of medical knowledge, and to give an opportunity
of learning the theory and practice of nursing and caring for the sick,
performs its duties but half, and serves the public but incompletely.
Every large hospital must be, and will be, a clinical school, and a
school for nurses. It will be acknowledged that as the presence of a
nurse in a sick-ward, who is sent there to learn, is considered unobjectionable, the presence of a few physicians observing a case, which can
not be injured by their so doing, is not only not injurious, but ought
to be demanded by the public, who have a right to expect a physician
in their own families who has seen and knows and understands what
he is called in to treat. I do not see why hospital patients only should
have the best money and service can afford, and why the public at large
should have to fall back in many cases on untried skill. Thus the people
have a right to demand that every large hospital should have a clinical
school, and a training-school for nurses. The public, who are willing
to pay for it, may also demand that the expenses of the same, particularly the nurses' school, should be borne by the hospital. This demand, if considered theoretical only, must stand as long as a hospital
is, or claims to be, a public institution. When the board of directors
of any institution will recognize that they are not the administrators
of the dollars of a small concern, but the benefactors of the public at
large, they will also appreciate not only that a few disinterested ladies
will open their pocket-books, and collect voluntary contributions, but
that a generous public will pay more willingly and more largely.
The demand that a large hospital should be a clinical school and a school for nurses, and that the expense should or might be borne by the institution, is not valid in the case of city or commonwealth hospitals only. Most of the hospitals of the country are originally private institutions. They obtain the character of being public affairs when an always increasing number of men and women become interested in and contributors to them. An institution with one or two thousand paying members represents ten or twenty thousand families—in fact, represents a city. And what it represents, of that it assumes the rights and duties. And the main duty the public at large will soon know how to enforce from the directors of every large hospital is, to administer the public domain to the greatest possible advantage for the greatest possible number. The selfishness of an individual adversary, the animosity of evil-spirited persons will never weigh,
