Year: 1876

| Among the wisest and wittiest sayings OF
Jeremy Bentham is his observation that
'boards are fences" Behind these great
screens all individual responsibility seems
to be lost, and none can be called upon to
answer for corporate culpability.


We have before us the last annual report
of the Visiting Committee of the State Chari-
ties Aid Association, which was instituted
under an act of the Legislature of May
81, 1873. The ladies, numbering nearly
eighty, who make up these visiting commit
tees, have performed their unlovely work
with such minuteness, fidelity and intelli-
gence as to give grounds for hope that In
time the great barrier of official indifference
may be overcome.


The report embraces full details of all the
charitable institutions under the charge OF
the city government, and, while it admits
that within the past year many important
reforms have been effected in cleanliness,
ventilation and nursing, these reforms seem
to have been spasmodic and only maintained
with great difficulty.


The Visiting Committee to Bellevue
Hospital found that institution not only
without soap for two weeks at time,
but without adequate supplies OF necessl-
ties; for instance, q total absence OF Ice
where special diseases required its use,
short rations to the wards, eggs for special
diet boiled in the tea great scarcity OF
proper surgical instruments, hot water diff
fcult to obtain and none in the wards at
night-in short, loose, hand to mouth
method of employing the appropriations.
1t is pleasant to find in this miserable
picture that in the nine wards allotted
to the Training School for Nurses the sys-
tenn is perfect and that the rule of the War
den is just, impartial and productive of
good discipline.


In the Charity Hospital, the epileptic
and paralytic pavilions and the Park Re-
ception Hospital the same false principles
and defective administration obtain in a
greater or less degree, the same inadequate
supplies and absence of all system or
even of any standard of decency. The
criminals who perform the manual labor
steal the clothing the air of the close and
foul cellars is heated and supplied to the
wards, while in the Charity Hospital the
overcrowding was such that five patients
were found in two beds, and many
other instances of the kind are cited. The
epileptic and paralytic pavilions appear to
be chambers of horrors, although the pavilion
for typhoid and other fevers shines out as
comfortable, airy, clean and well managed
by good nnrse. The Park Reception Hos
pital is fortunately closed, after q manage
ment that would reflect shame on Hot
tentots.


The whole report is summed up in the
following concluding paragraph:-"The con-
clusion to which your committee is brought
by its experience in the hospitals is that
while the utmost parsimony is practised
in the kind and amount of material and
provisions supplied the discipline is so
lax that the responsibility for any deficiency
is hard to fix. If, instead of keeping all
supplies at the lowest ebb. those in authority
would furnish them according to certain
fixed and established rules, and not only
place the responsibility but enforce it in
the proper quarters, exacting high stand
ard of cleanliness and order from patients
and employees alike, it would, as we believe,
prove economical in the end by checking
waste and theft, and it would also infinitely
raise the moral tone of the institutions and
tend to teach and reform their ignorant and
often degraded inmates"


The committee, at the same time, bear
testimony to the courteous manner in which
the Commissioners listen to their representa-
tions, and express their belief that, while the
Board are honestly desirous to effect inn
provements, they are hampered by system
fastened upon them by tradition and by
maladministration in higher places but
before such radical changes can be effected
in our costly and ill-managed institutions
great and sweeping reforms must take place.
There is one crying evil which should cease
to exist at once. and which is probably the
great keynote to the whole neglect and
wrong described in the report-it is the
present reckless and guilty system of politi-
cal appointments Let that system be
abolished and each department. be admins
tered by responsible heads, and all other
evils would vanish in its train. 1t requires,
however, very strong influences to accom-
plish this. Visiting committees can report
but they cannot abate nuisances or change
laws Their influence therefore, though
great, must remain purely moral one.