Amador ledger. (Jackson, Amador County, Calif.) 1875-19??, 1906-10-12
Stockton Hospital for Insane
By Arthur j. PilIsbury.

As soon as California began to be
state it began to make provision TO
taking care of Its unfortunates, b!
establishing state general hospita
at Stockton. 10 this general hospita
the insane we're sent, but 1t was founc
not to be quite the place for them
and in 1853, the general hospital wa
abolished and an insane asylum VA
established in its stead.
This was unfortunate in part and il
part highly commedable. 1t was
proper to establish an asylum for the
insane, but the state general Hospital
should have been perpetuated. grow
| ing year by year to meet the growing
demand until by now. California
would, without doubt, have state
general hospital the equal of thai
of Massachusetts, public charity OF
unsurpassed beneficence.
Boosted With A Donation.
Captain Weber, OF revered memory,
gave the State of California one
hundred acres of choice land adJoin-
ing the village of Stockton to be used
for asylum purposes, and since then,
twenty nine acres more have been
added by purchase to the plot, which
has been built upon and adorned
until it has in the state no rival as a
park unless it be the capital grounds
at Sacramento. Some of the ground
was low lying and all of it was adobe,
but it has been flied in and enriched
from time to time with thousands of
cart loads of sedimentary "slickens
from the bed of the CaIaveras river,
until it is now all productive and
we'll drained.
1t Grew and Grew.
The asylum was opened In July
1858, and by the end of that year had
l02 patients. In ten years more 1t
had $50, and in another decade 1856,
by which time the state had faced
the problem of establishing another
asylum and had broken ground at
Napa. On the day of my last visit
to Stockton Hospital, Septem Der %,
1905, there we're confined in the in
stitution 658 women and 1884 men.
Added to this total OF 1912 persons,
whose processes of cerebration do not
sufficiently accord with those OF
other people outside to warrant their
being at large; there are 65 attend
ants in the male wards. 43 attendants
in the female department, 10 en-
ployes on farm and in the dairy, and
enough officers, engineers, mechanics
etc. to bring the population up to a
round 1000 persons to be fed and
clothed and generally cared for at
public expense.
How They Are Housed.
Of the old, original hospital of 1858
little or nothing remains. The work
of rebuilding with permanent brick
structures began in the fifties and
kept op, pIecemeal, until an aggre-
gate of s24S, 600 had been expended in
tearing down aud building greater
what is now known as the "oid" hos
pital which still accommodates be-
tween 500 and 600 men patients.
The beautiful and commodious
Womans' hospital was built between
1864 and '68 at a cost of $3.50, 600. 1t
was built to accommodate 500 pa
tients, but there are now 658 in it,
and always room for one more, al
though not always easy to tell where
to put another one.
The splendid appearing mems main
hopsital was completed in 1885 at a
cost of s224, 900. Other buildings,
accessory to the general use, have
been built from time to time uutil
the state now has invested in build
ings, something more than $3.50, 0OO
For ten years or more there has
been little or no new building done
at Stockton, but only remodeling in
order to make room for more patients.
Condition of Buildings.
The hospital buildings are all
stanch and we're uninjured by the
earthquake of April Is, but this is
not saying that they would have
withstood such shock as that which
threw Agnew down, tor they would
not, and yet they are distinctly better
built buildings than those at Agnew
ever WERE
But they are not modern and the
state should build no more like them.
The plan of having one hallway down
the center with rooms off both sides
Is not good for an insane hospital,
although 1t may do for hotel. In
hospital the patients have to live
In the Railways, and only sleep in
adjacent rooms. A better type of
building Is one that has airy, sunny.
octagonal, projecting bay window
like rooms either at the end or in the
middle of the wards, letting in a
great flood of light and constituting
the sitting rooms instead of using
the Railways for sitting rooms. The
buildings at Stockton made some
attempt to attain this end, but the
octagonal projections were far too