The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1912-09-04


 benefit of the baths, and, except in the cold weather. there is usually waiting list at the bathrooms. The rooms than the old. Of course the only baths the bed patients have are the acohol spongings given by the nurses.
 The minor surgical operations are performed by the staff of the sana- toriurn Arrangenments have been of the state to care for patients from the sanatoria whose condition de- mands major operations.
 One point remains,-2the use of grad uated work therapeutic agent. So far, nothing has been done in this matter The Commission realizes the importance of having patients inured to work before letting them return to their old habitations and occupa tions: but in the multitude of problems aris- they have not been able to devise a satisfactory system of work applicable to the state sanatoria. The problem is much more difficult at a state in stitution than at private sanator- iun1. In the sanatoria at F'rimley and Whitehaven and the other. places where such good results have been ob- tained, the patient who is told to take a specified amount of exercise, or to do a specified amount of work per day, knows that if he does not comply with the instructions, he will be sent home. Our state institutions are in existence, not only for the sake of the
 
 ing of the community, and am afraid that the patient who would go back uncured to his friends from one of our state sanatoria with the story that he had been expelled be- cause he had refused to do work that the physicians considered him able to do, but that he himself didn't want to do, would find many to sympathize with him in his sense of grievnace, and the comm unity would feel that we were endangering the public at large for a very trifling reason. How ever we do not consider the difficul- ties of this matter .insuperabte, and in tell of progress along this attractive line.
 When a, patient arrives at the san atorium he is carefully exami ned, and his condition and his history entered on the usual charts. A digest of the facts elicted at the examination is ference by the members of the Com mission or visiting physicians. Addi- tiona1 reports of physical and micro scopic examinations in a case are en- tered from time to time in the second book
 Each of the sanatoria has a small practical laboratory where periodic ex- aninations of sputum are made for all patients. Slides are preserved for lat CT comparisons. The temperature of every patient is taken and recorded three times a day. Breakfast is served at 7:30 o'clock, dinner at 12:30, and supper at 5:3o o'clock. Lights are out
 
 sleeping patients, and night watch1nen guard the grounds.
 Fourth-Results.Up to March 2sd' tients had been admitted to the She1- 1 ton Sanatorium, and three hundred and four to the Hartford Sanatorium main in the sanatoria. When com pal ed with the statistics you need | only remember that the state sana- toria, accept patients in all stages of l large | of those who first came were the a1 most moribund consumptives from the even now patients are sent to us who have only a few days; and some only a few hours of resistance left. | The original conception among many physicians and the public in genarl l was that the state institutions were simply human scrap heaps; homes of or were sent. That was never true, and it is becoming farther from the T truth every month More and more | tn people are realizing that although | vide luxuries for her tuberculosis pa | tients, she does now provide them ing the .'open-air cure' and she has no other expectation of reward than the joy of seeing them regain their | health.
 Perhaps even some of you who listen to me now are surprised to find that the state sanatoria dare to compare 1 vate and seni-private sanatoria. Don t n1isunderstand me; there is rival ry: no desire to belittle the splendid
 work done in the private institutions. There is merely the desire to make
 it clear that a good proportion of the
 tuberculous patients in pr. Connect1- cuts care have improved, and are i'm
 proving at just the same rate as are
 the patients of the same stage of the
 disease in other wsll-conducted sana- l toria. I dwell on this point somewhat 3 length because
 oretical plans of campaign against tu-
 berculosis that apepar in the socio-
 logical and medical journals, there is } frequent reference to the need of hav-
 ing county homes where the hopeless
 cases alone may be treated. I don't desirable. Certainly those established by the State of Conencticut are not ot that character
 modern theory of tuberculosis is true the theory that every case of tubercu- losis was caught from some other case of tuberculosis, then the segre- gating of Dr. Conencticut's three hun- dred tuberculous patients means suct
 benefits to the million inhabitants o1 this state, benefits in the way oi heightened lives, and more lives, and } healthier lives, and happier lives such benefits as cannot be computed ir } terms Of dolalrs and cents, and suct
 benefits as deprive Connecticut of al , purely altruistic motives iii her ex- , penditure of one hundred thousand dollars a year On nef state SandIOfla Still Another Result-The entranc of Conenct1cut into the field a spec. f ialist in the treatment of tuberculosis ? has deprived the genar1 practitioner: Of the state Of many patients anC s much income. But to the honor O the profession let it be said that i = was due in great part to the urgen g and sympathetic plea dingS of the fam ? fly physicians of the various town t | that the members of the Iegislatur' : were interested in the great crusad 3 1 and were made to see what the stat = could and-should- for-the poor- con