Evening star., 1907-08-24
SEEK FREE DOCTORS"
Throngs Visit New York's Great
Clinics and Hospitals.
A MILLION CASES A YEAR
Number Equal to 0ne-Fourth Popula-
tion Are Treated.
GATEWAY OF MANY SORROWS
Typical Scenes at the New York
University Clinic, the Largest
in the City.
GATEWAY OF MANY SORROWS

Special Correspondence OF The Star.
NEW YORK, August %, 1907.
Over 100000 persons. a number equal to
about one-fourth the total population of the
city receive medical attention during the
year at the dspensaries and public clinics
of the metropolis These institutions give
every year about 100000 treatments, or,
in other words, have broad enough scope
of service to give medical aid to three out
OF every four inhabitants OF the city. The
annual number of prescriptions given away
is about 100000.
This great number of persons who fall
sick and cannot take care of themselves is
a pitiful outgrowth of the strenuousness of
metropolitan life. in which the less alert.
the more careless, or the persons with
physical mental handicaps fall so hope
lessly behind In the crowded tenement
districts of the city there are thousands of
families which can manage to exc out a
livelihood SO long as everything goes
smoothly with them. but as soon as the
rent money is demanded for medicine they
are compelled to turn to the public charity.
Probably the most typical well the
largest of clinics for free medical treatment
ia that conducted by the University and
Bellevue Hospital Medical College which is
the medical school of New York University
at 18th street and 1st avenue. in the heart
of the polyglot "gashouse'' district Last
year the clinic handled 4.Sj9 cases, and
the number is now averaging $500 a
month. The "gashouse" district is one of
the sections of the town which up to a few
years ago retained population of de-
cidedly Irish complexion. but of late the
Gaels have been getting forced out by the
overwhelming incursion of Italians and
Jews, trending up from the lower East
Side This means to clinic fewer broken
bones and battered faces, and more eye,
ear and throat troubles.
Worlds Saddest Street.
The medical school, with it's spacious
laboratories and lecture halls and its great
clinic. Is situated at the head of what has
been called the saddest block in the world
On the opposite side of the street is Belle
vue, the big free hospital of the city con-
stantly crowded with over LOCO patients
and offering a wealth of clinical material
for the students of the school. Farther
down the street Is the morgue, and at the
foot of the street. on the river front. are
the offices of the department of charities,
from which boats are constantly leaving
crowded with drunks or petty crooks bound
for the workhouse on Blackwelrs Island
or with the pitiable flotsam and jetsam of
society that drifts to the public almhouse
stranger who stroled into the block
would get the Impression that he had found
the gateway of all the sorrows OF the world
1t is a sad procession that moves in and
out or the clinic every day while the doors
are Open between the hours of 10 and 3
o'clock There are little children, some
OF them mass of sores and many of
them suffering from diseases the child
need never know: old women scarcely able
to totter out from their squalid rooms to
the place where the free doctors" are:
huge truckmen or 'longshoremen who swag-
ger In with cuts or bruises probably re-
ceived in some brawl: frail young women
already palpably marked for consumption.
the white plague of the tenements drunken
men; women who have been beaten by
their husbands, and all the various types of
human Illness and disease.
Ragged clothes are the rule the part
OF those who come to the clinic for treat
ment. Put on old clothes for the free
doctor" Is a maxim OF the gashouse dis
trict. but most OF the patients do not have
to dress for the part. Their working clothes
are often their only ones. and these are
sufficiently ragged to enlist sympathy.
As the patients enter the spacious waiting
room OF the clinic they go to the receiving
desk. where they tell their symptoms to a
kindly faced man who has the faculty OF
taking a personal interest in the most un-
prepossessing, and receive numbered ca rds
to the physicians In the different depart
ments. Then they take seats on the rows
of benches assigned to the different classes
OF Ills and walt until their number is called
and the physician is ready for them.
To the stray observer the pitifully de-
Jected appearance of the Struggling line
that moves to the desk is heightened by
the glmpses of white-clad. alert physl-
clans and nurses bustling in and out of the