Evening star., 1937-11-26
Poor Old Gallinger.

investigated again on charges of over
crowding and inadequate facilities.
1t is poor according to Dr. George c.
Rutland, head of the Health Department,
which has controlled municipal hospitals
since last July under Congressional act
of transfer from the Board of Public
Welfare, and DR.. Edgar A. Bocock, super
tntendent of the institution. 1t is cer-
tainly old, some of the buildings now
being used to house patients having
sheltered wounded troops during the
Civil War.
To call attention to the need for a
unified health program and to conditions
now obtaining there Dr. Rutland has
appointed committee of members of
the District Medical Society to look into
the situation, confident it will find what
he and DR.. Bocock have known all along
and hopeful that it will exercise influence
at the right time.
The most important person necessary
to be convinced of the hospital need is
Chairman Ross A. Collins of the House
subcommittee on appropriations. and the
members of the committee. Mr.. Collins
has already taken issue with the state
ment the appropriation is inadequate,
pointing out Gallinger was given more
than S65,000 this year above what it
received last year. 1t was his under
standing at the time that this would
be sufficient. He said he had also been
told that the transfer of jurisdiction to
the Health Department, as carried in
the appropriation bill rider, would in
crease efficiency and enable treatment
of some patients, particularly obstetrical
cases, in the homes, thus keeping down
the overcrowding.
One can easily understand the feelings
OF the chairman; it is correspondingly
difficult to overlook fact. If the number
of patients has made necessary the reno
walton of these Civil War relics to care
for the influx of patients, there must be
overcrowding and poor conditions. If the
personnel is designed to serve normal
capacity, natural consequence of over
crowding is lack of adequate personnel
Gallinger is municipal hospital caring
for patients of all races, both sexes, all
ages, and all diseases. Though Glenn Dale
Sanatorium has been completed lack of
adequate personnel there leaves Gallinger
with more tubercular patients than
1t can adequately handle. A Welfare
vi oil
to aid children in Children's Hospital,
except in emergency cases, until every
bed in the children's ward at Gallinger
is full. All decrepit alcoholics picked up
by the Police Department, if sufficiently
drunk, are taken to Gallinger.
In short, since "the poor are always
with us" and sickness is concomitant
Of poverty; since the population is
increasing here, will not overcrowding
at the municipal institution likewise be
always with us unless great increases in
facilities are made? Chairman Collins
Is right, appropriations have increased;
but so have the needs of the city. The
Commissioners have already hacked
$l50,000 medical building item from the
Gallinger budget, intended to bring the
supply more into line with the demand.
The citizens are demanding that the
budget be kept to the level of current
appropriations. Parsimony is seldom
worth while in dealing with human needs.
But what is true of Gallinger is true, in
greater or less degree, of every municipal
function under a system of Capital City
financing that is wholly incapable of
meeting existing needs.
Here in Washington it is sometimes
easy to lose sight Of the forest because
OF single tree. The faults at Gallinger
are true, more or less, of other municipal
institutions. A building program and
more personnel at Gallinger are doubt
less necessary. But more vital still is a
building program for the Health Depart
ment, of which Gallinger is only part.
DR.. Rutland is doing what he can to
make that program effective. It will be
accomplished when there is proper con-
ception of the city's health needs as a
u,bp1o