The daily morning journal and courier., 1901-11-02
BEDSIDE CLINICS OUT.
WARDEN HEALY TELLS WHY THEY
 ARE ABOLISHED
From Chicago Hospital-Mnke Bed- lam of Institution and Interfere With the Recovery of Its Pa ffenfa

tients
 Pronounced changes in the manage
 nent of the Cook county hospital were
 set forth in an address by Warden
 Daniel D. Healy before the Physicians
 club of Chicago at the Wellington hotel
 Monday night Bedside clinics" were
 severely arraigned by the warden and
 their abolishment from the county hos
 pital declared to be based on humani-
 tarian considerations. The warden
 spoke of the ideas which led to the es-
 tablishment of the hospital and declar-
 ed that it was originally built and con
 ducted for the purpose of the ''care,
 cure and binding up of the wounds of
 the indigent residents of Cook county"
 He held that the educational element must always give way where it con-
 ficted with the primary purposes of
 the institution. The warden scored the
 old custom of allowing patients to wait
 in an ante-room while other patients
 undergo the trials of a public clinic in
 the amphitheater. Besides MT, Healy,
 the Rev. E. G. Hirsch, Dr. R. H. Bab-
 cock, the Rev. Dr. R. E. Preble and Dr.
 James B. Herrick made addresses.
 MT. Healy spoke on Possible Abuses
 and Necessary Safeguards" After giv-
 ing a few facts in connection with the
 inception of the county hospital and
 mentioning that it was established
 when the wounded soldiers of the north
 were returning home, in 1865, MT.
 Healy said:
 The question should be considered
 under two heads. There are public clinics, such as we have in the amphi
 theater of the county hospital. A few suggestions might be pertinent at this time in regard to possible abuses that occur in the handling of patients at these public functions. It would ap pear to me to be extremely tiresome and have bad influence on nervous patient to be carried from his ward to the clinic and kept there while the large number of other patients are also awaiting to have their cases discussed before the class. It would seem that the proper way to do this is to arrange to have the patient brought before the clinic from the ward at the moment when his presence was required and re- turned to his ward as promptly as pos sible The nerve-racking noise and confusion of preparing the patient for this clinical investigation and dragging his bed from the long corridors seems to be particularly cruel and inhuman. The management is arranging to pro- vide noiseless wheels for beds and will gladly cooperate with the physicians in rendering any aid or providing any means that will eliminate this abuse.
 The private or bedside clinics, to my mind, are all abuse, and to them I will direct my principal attention. There are but few men if any in Chicago who come in such direct touch with so many clinics as the warden of the county hos pital, so that you may be sure I am not speaking from theory, but from ac- tual evryday experience.
 On the question of possible abuses and necessary safeguards of clinical teaching in the county hospital you will therefore please understand that am dealing with bedside clinics alone. On this question I desire to say that there are now no possible abuses or necessary for the reason that as soon as I became warden of the hospital and had convinced myself that the old form of bedside clinics was unquestionably wrong, followed the biblical injunc- ton about the offensive eye. I, there fore, acted just as one of you doctors would do who had discovered a case re- quiring amputation-I ordered the abuse cut off and cast out of the coun- Ey hospital I hope forever. In taking this action some four months ago I | based it upon my observations of prac- tice in the county hospital. I do not | want you gentlemen to understand that | assume to know anything of the | practice In private hospitals. In pri- l vate hospitals, l have no doubt, where | he patients and inmates can afford ev- ery luxury, have private rooms and | special nurses, and all the comforts and of home, do the physi- ,ians in charge of a case allow under graduates from various medical schools md colleges to gallop through the 'ooms and wards, and to examine and diagnose the cases and the patients at 'andom and at will? Is this the custom n private hospitals where they have patients who are able to pay any price or the restoration of health? In my ,wn family, whenever there has been ickness, our family doctor has never suggested bringing in his class in order hat future generations might be bene- lted by the effect of their bedside ab- orption of knowledge but then, as I m the head of but one family, and ave but one family doctor my experi- .nce in no way must be taken as a riterion for the general practice of nedicine
 At the county hospital, however, when
 became warden, found that it was he habit or the custom for the various nedical institutions or colleges in the of the county hospital to end their classes through out institu- lon and into nearly all the wards, | ither under care of a professor or not, or the purpose of holding lectures, ex- minations and observations at the bed- ldes of patients. The theory of this rocedure seemed to be that as the in lates at the county hospital were un- ble to procure treatment except at ! ublic expense they had become the otsam and jetsam on the tide of hu- lan life and had, therefore, only be- ,une material for educational purposes. I he eminent scientists and physicians l ho insist that bedside instruction and ( -udv in the county hospital should be 1 ,stered make the basis of their argu-