The Birmingham age-herald., 1905-12-17
PERSONAL INJURY BILL |S ENORMOUS Millions Paid Out Every Year
 by Railroads PLANS TO SAVE TRAVELLERS Large Expenditures Are Made to Pre- vent Accidents and Provide First Aid for the lnjured-Trav-
 cling Hospital.
PLANS TO SAVE TRAVELLERS
From the New York Times.

the costs of damages for injuries to per sons" continues to roll up astonishing to- tals. The Southern railroad heads the persons during the fiscal year. This sum is per cent interest on s26, S25, GOO, capital almost sufficient to double track the en- tire line It shows at any rate how much money a railroad can afford to spend to make travel safe and to cut down the damages arising from the accidents that experience proves are bound to happen.
 Every road has this personal injury bill to pay This year it cost the Erie S5O3, 900, the Atchison, s433,0 the Baltimore and Ohio, s342, 1000. The Pennsylvania on its main division escaped with $440oo dam ages. Last year the New York Central paid out $355,OO0 for injuries to persons. but the figures for the current year will be increased enormously by the great wreck at Marietta, Ohio, when the eighteen-hour train to Chicago ran through an open switch.
 Along with the increase of safety de- vices which in spite of the appalling an- nual lists of casualties make railroad travel safer year by year, the railroad companies, besides the vast sums eXpend- ed upon the ounce of prevention, add largely to theiR current expenses to make as efficient as possible the pounds of cure All of the great roads maintain hospital service more or less complete for first aid treatment Qf employees, but 1t has re- mained for the Southern Pacific, which paid S20i5,000 last year for injury to life and property, to carry the medical service idea to it's highest development in the hos pital car.
 Hospital on Wheels.
 This road has recently completed in it's San Francisco shops a wonderful car an immense ambulance on wheels, with all the devices and conveniences of the mod ern hospital
 Stationed at the companys hospital near West Oakland, Cal, with a trained nurse and cook assigned to 1t, and with med teal supplies and provisions always aboard, the car is ready at an instant's notice to be coupled to an engine and whirled at high speed to the scene of dis aster.
 The hospital car is a marvel of com pactness and hygenic convenience. It is sixty-seven feet long, with a breadth of 9 feet inches Twenty-six feet of the central body of the car is given up to the operating and dressing room, as complete and aseptc as any fast-anchored hospital can boast of, and a ward with berths for twelve patients. The rear of the car is built as an observation room, and between it and the hospital proper are staterooms for doctors and nurses, all of which in emergency may be turned Into comforta- ble resting places for the injured await ing their turns at the surgeons hands. Forward a limited space is given to ktch- m rsfr iutp raf for flf rt md all the necessities of travel very much the same in equipment as the domestic economy of a private car, for the staff must sometimes travel far, and on occa- sion, too, the car may be called Into ser vice to do duty on an official junket.
 Berths for the Injured.
 The ward room ordinarily is arranged like parlor car, with easy chairs by the windows and the floor space left clear. Under the car body, stored in pockets reached through trap-doors, is the para phernalia which goes to make up the twelve berths With mattresses and bed springs to give the injured greater ease than the ordinary Pullman berth affords. Close by is the medical locker room, with closets containing a regular dispensary outfit and sets of surgical instruments suitable for all the ordinary operations attendant upon railroad smash-up.
 With an immense mileage through a sparsely populated country where dis tances between towns are so great as to make local medical aid a precarious de- pendence. the road finds 1t a necessity and an economy to provide It's own hospital service on wheels. for the saving or life and limb, which with the equivalent cash saving in damage suits, makes the emer- gency car as valuable from the dollars and cents point of view as for humanitarian reasons. Other similar, though less elab- crate, cars will be built by the Southern Pacific and stationed on the various di- visions of the line, and In addition to these, 1t is also the roads intention. ac- cording to the Railway Age, to establish emergency hospitals at remote points on the system.
 Prompt Surgical Aid. Few people know that in the older sec tions of the country the railroads have for years maintained a system by which surgical aid can be brought to any point on the line in the shortest possible time and with the least possible excuse for confusion or bungling. It is the general custom on American roads for each di- vision to have it's regularly appointed sur geons, selected from practitioners, along the line At each important center one sometimes several, surgeons are regularly engaged by the road. Some are retained on a fixed salary but the majority on a fee basis, receiving payment for such work as they perform.
 Outside of the towns the country is di- vided into districts, each apportioned to a local doctor who must hold himself ready to travel to any point of his territory at a moments notice. It is the business of the chief surgeon of the road to keep in touch with these men. know where they are to be reached at all time and pro- vide plan of campaign for each district so that the call flor medical aid may be sent out with the least possible delay and doctors and medical supplies car ried to the scene of the accident with out the loss of minute. Often the in- jured are treated in less time than 1t takes a New York ambulance to answer call but their work Is only first-aid dressing and emergency operations. The injured are loaded aboard cars and hus- tied to the nearest hospital as soon as surgeons are through
 Some roads, like the Chicago and North western. maintain a hospital of their own at the terminal city where passen- ger victims of accidents may be treated as we'll as employees. Primarily the Chi cago and Northwestern's hospital is in- tended for employees, and the staff of chief surgeon and three assistants are examinations and physical tests of appli- cants for positions when there are no medical cases to occupy them.
 
 Hermitage. the sign painter. can be found at Seventeenth street, between First and Second avenues. 12-6-4t s-