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history of Jamaica Hospital is a long and colorful one. It
is filled with defining moments, colorful characters, and
connections to events affecting the local community, the
City of New York, and the world.
Jamaica Hospital has undergone a major transformation over
the past 25 years of its existence. Emerging from near oblivion
brought about by financial decline, and operational difficulty
caused by
an old and outdated facility, Jamaica Hospital is today a
larger, stronger and more prominent medical and community
health institution.
Led by our Board of Trustees, CEO,
David P. Rosen, COO, Bruce J. Flanz,
and CFO, Mounir F. Doss beginning in
the late 1970's, Jamaica Hospital was brought back from the
brink. Since the late 1980's this team has completely rebuilt
the facilities to some of the most modern in the city.
These leaders have attracted a world class medical staff,
and have established and grown a wide array of clinical programs
to help us keep pace with the world around us. As we proceed
into our second century of service, Jamaica Hospital remains
a major provider of health care to the NY Region.
But the story of Jamaica Hospital goes way back to the 1880's
before Queens County became a part of the City of New York.
The early history of our hospital was colorfully described
in a book written earlier in the 20th Century by a member
of the medical staff at the hospital named Francis G. Riley,
M.D.
His chronicle titled, "The Jamaica Hospital" A History
of the Institution follows below.
In the Beginning
In the beginning, Jamaica Hospital was a vision. A vision
in the minds of some stalwart men who wore moustaches and
sideburns, and of some far-seeing ladies who wore bustles-the
inhabitants of the village of Jamaica in the year 1883. That's
not so long ago in the history of the world, but it's a long
way back in the annals of Jamaica and Long Island.
In 1883, Jamaica had a population of 2,500. You could have
carried away nearly all of them on a single train of the
Independent Subway (although it is doubtful that many of
them could have been persuaded to descend below Hillside
Avenue and get aboard). Travel was mostly by stagecoach over
toll roads, which extended westward to the East River ferries
and eastward to the farms and the seashore, or by the Long
Island Railroad, whose trains chugged haltingly and tediously
to the Flatbush Station.
Jamaica ladies who made shopping trips to the city were
frequently enjoined by the local press to watch closely their
handbags and other personal articles, especially on the ferries,
because of the agility of sneak thieves and pickpockets.
Chester Alan Arthur was in the White House as the twenty-first
President of the United States, having taken office following
the assassination of President Garfield. Queen Victoria,
only two generations removed from King George the Third of
Revolutionary War fame, sat on the British throne, in the
forty-sixth year of her long reign. Grover Cleveland, later
to serve two terms as President, was in the Governor's chair
at Albany.
In Jamaica, much of the current discussion centered around
the method to be followed in putting in a village water supply.
The point in controversy was whether the village should finance
the project or let it out to a private company. A local weekly
newspaper, the Democrat, argued that if a private concern
could do it and make a profit, the village should do it instead,
and save the profit. At this time, each Jamaica household
drew its water from an individual pump or well.
Hoodlums congregated at night along Fulton Street (Jamaica Avenue), and made
life miserable for respectable citizens who found it necessary to be out after
dark. The Democrat called attention to this blot on the community escutcheon. "There
are", wrote the paper's editor, "several of our young village youths
who make a habit of carousing the streets after dark and taking liberties that
are unlawful. We give them a gentle hint to be careful, as they are being looked
after."
One building, standing at the northeast corner of what
is now Jamaica Avenue and Parsons Boulevard, and not demolished
until 1940, served as Town Hall, Opera House, jail-and hospital.
The cells were the village's only accommodation for the injured
or ill who for one reason or another could not be transferred
to hospitals in Brooklyn or New York.
The village had just one telephone. It was in the office of the newspapers,
the Standard, and any Jamaican so extravagant as to want to phone to the city
had to go to the city had to go to the Standard office and make his call from
there. There was no mail delivery service, and apparently no demand for it.
When such a service was proposed, a couple of years later, the editor of the
Democrat put his foot down. :"We don't want any", he wrote. "Everybody
in town knows exactly when the mails arrive, and can go and get what's there;
examine the same, and go about other business. To have letter carriers dropping
in at any time of the day and leaving letters, etc., might be a nuisance. Don't
want any, thanks."
At about the same time the editor, faithful guardian that
he was of the status quo, argued against any change from
gas to electricity for lighting purposes. "It costs
more than gas", he wrote, "and the light is unsteady.
The poles and system of wires required make its use otherwise
objectionable. The current is not readily dividable, so as
to make it applicable to the lighting of dwellings, and while
the electric light will be used where a great deal of luminous
power is required, and where the expense is not chiefly considered,
it does not look at present as if it would ever displace
illuminating as in the field which the latter occupies."
The streets in the village were unpaved-roadways and sidewalks
alike. It was a common custom for the householders to deposit
their garbage in the roadways. The local paper crusaded against
this practice on several grounds, among them being that it
made the road-bed uneven, and travel hazardous. However,
the editor had no patience with those who were chronic kickers
about the village thoroughfares. "The main street",
he wrote on one occasion, "is now in fine condition
and is as dry, hard and level as anyone can desire. When
the weather moderates it may not give as good satisfaction.
Let us enjoy what is good while we may, and be quiet when
it is otherwise." Later some grading work was done at
the intersections, pleasing even the editor. He wrote: "The
raising of the crosswalks on Fulton Street has made a decided
improvement in their appearance, and a great convenience
to pedestrians, who can cross the street without getting
over their shoes in mud. If some of the crossings on the
side street had the mud dug off, one might see that there
was a crossing."
Medical fees, like all other elements of the cost of living,
were very reasonable. One of the most prominent physicians,
Dr. W. D. Wood, used to charge fifty cents for a call to
his office, with medicine thrown in. Many years ago an elderly
patient told this writer of his astonishment when Dr. Wood
later raised his fee to seventy-five cents and medicine extra.
Dr. Wood was too busy with his practice to take on other
duties as we note in the following letter printed in the
Democrat on April 7th, 1885.
Next Steps
"To the Chairman of the Town Committee:
"Dear Sir, -I respectfully decline the nomination for Justice of the Peace,
in this town.
"With thanks to the Committee,
"I remain very respectfully,
"W.D. Wood, M.D."
Dr. Wood continued to practice his profession in Jamaica
until his death in 1903. He was never officially connected
with the Jamaica Hospital because at the time of its incorporation
in 1892 he was already seventy-one years of age. His son,
Philip, however, was a member and the first Vice-President
of the Medical Board.
The following obituary is taken from Ladd's "Origin
and History of Grace Church, Jamaica": "The death
of Doctor William D. Wood, October 7, 1903, reminded the
older members of the parish of the virtues of his long and
useful life in this community. He completed all the years
allotted to man in his strength, yet at the age of eight-two,
and during illness which he could not resist, he still desired
to live and do good. He was a faithful and affectionate husband
and father, an honorable and liberal citizen, and an assiduous,
considerate and charitable physician, successful in the skill
and judgment, which he had acquired in over fifty years of
practice in Jamaica and vicinity.
"His life as a Christian and church man was exemplary
in the highest degree. He did not neglect his duties to the
Church and her ordinances because of the duties or distractions
of his profession. Doctor Wood was a constant and zealous
attendant at both Sunday services of the Church, continuing
such till his last sickness, which began in the middle of
August, made it impossible for him to leave his home. He
was a liberal supporter of the Church and her benevolence.
His memorial there is the stately processional cross borne
before the choir, to whose services he ever gave generous
aid.
"As Vestryman he welcomed the members of the Vestry
in later years to his home, and encouraged them and the rector
in their progressive measures for the enlargement and beautifying
of the Grace Church and a consistent administration of its
affairs.
"As a friend, to his companions, he was genial and
true hearted; to the poor and suffering he never spared himself
in order to relieve their pain, or to console them in their
sorrows and loneliness.
"To this rector Doctor Wood was ever helpful and sympathetic, encouraging
by word and deed, and always staunchly adhering to the traditions and to the
faith and Church in which he was born, baptized and confirmed, being true to
his English parentage. He served the Lord Christ to the last in ministering to
those who were hungry, thirsty, sick and in prison."
A horse car line ran from Grand Street, the present terminus
of the elevated, down along Fulton Street (Jamaica Avenue)
and over the turnpike to Brooklyn. It was to be replaced on
December 17, 1887, by an electric trolley car line, the first
to go into regular operation anywhere in the United States.
Curiously, Jamaica never has had full recognition for this
distinction. The Encyclopedia Brittanica says Richmond line
was run experimentally in the fall of 1887 and began regular
service in February 1888. Since the Jamaica trolleys were
in regular operation two months earlier, it is obvious that
the editors of the encyclopedia have been misinformed.
Jamaica's adjustment to the change from horse car to trolley
service was stormy, but quickly accomplished. Horses reared
in terror at the sight of the new-fangled, self-propelled
monsters. Dogs, barking excitedly, chased the cars all along
the route. Many residents complained of the speed and recklessness
with which the trolley cars were driven, and called them
a menace to life and limb of man and beast. And there was
much debate about the relative merits of horses and electricity
when the trolley cars were bogged down, a few months after
they began operation, by the stupendous blizzard of '88.
But in 1883, when our story begins, Jamaica still was served
by the horse cars, which had been in operation since 1837.
The fast-growing metropolis of New York City, which then
centered well downtown, around Union Square, lay remotely
over the western horizon. And in the office of the Long Island
Democrat, the editor sat and viewed with alarm the dizzy
pace of Manhattan life.
"Scarcely a week passes," he wrote, "in which
someone is not killed in the City of New York by an elevator.
While most of these accidents occur through carelessness of
the victims in getting off or on while the elevator is moving,
still the fact remains that the introduction of the elevator
has added greatly to the risks of life. While we navigate
the air on elevated roads, and mount from six to ten stories
high to our offices by stream, there must be more danger than
when we kept nearer to the surface. But the ambitious spirit
of the age will not be satisfied until we have added balloon
navigation to our present means of travel. In many ways this
is a fast age, and "slow and sure" is an obsolete
motto and not applicable to this generation."
We may be sure that the editor was glad to live in Jamaica,
where there were no elevators to endanger life or limb. Where
the lamplighter still made his leisurely rounds at dusk and
touched a flickering taper to the as lamps along Fulton Street,
and where oxen still hauled many of the plows, which turned
the furrows in neighboring fields. The fast age had not reached
Jamaica. "Slow and sure" was a motto still fairly
generally observed.
Of that we are quite well aware, because slow and sure
are the adjectives, which best describe the evolution of
Jamaica Hospital. In 1883, people of Jamaica foresaw the
need for an institution where the ill could be made well.
So they held a Hospital Fair and raised the sum of $179.40.
This money was held intact during the following nine years,
and was the nucleus of the fund with which the Jamaica Hospital
was finally opened in 1891, a short distance east of the
southeast corner of Fulton and Canal Streets (now Jamaica
Avenue and 169th Street).
An Institution is Born
On May 24th, 1883, an event occurred which was to end the
isolation of the Long Island communities. This event was
the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge.
To the world at large, the story was of a great spectacle.
The New York City newspapers featured the booming cannon fire,
the ear-splitting shrilling and tooting of steamboat whistles,
and the presence of dignitaries. President Arthur was there
with members of his cabinet, and Governor Cleveland with his
staff, also the Mayors of New York and Brooklyn, and Senators
and Representatives from many States. There was hardly a cloud
in the sky. The new bridge itself and its approaches on both
sides of the river were decked with bunting and with flags,
which whipped proudly in the cool breeze. Thunderous roars
of applause went up at the ceremonial climax, when the President
and his escort began moving across the bridge from New York
to Brooklyn in "twenty glistening" coaches drawn
by the handsomest horses in the city".
In Jamaica, properly enough, the editor of the Democrat
viewed the opening of the bridge in the light of what it
would mean to Jamaicans. He wrote:
The Great Bridge between New York and Brooklyn was formally
Opened on Thursday last amid great rejoicing, and with impressive
Impressive ceremonies…..Plans already are being laid for an elevated
road to join the Long Island Railroad at Flatbush Avenue (with the bridge),
and
when this is done Jamaica will be truly a suburb of New York City.
As a direct result of the opening of the bridge, the Long
Island Railroad inaugurated a rapid transit line between
Jamaica and Brooklyn. This was known, for short, as "The
Rapid". When it went into operation, the old stagecoaches
became obsolete and soon were abandoned. Cast in a new role
as a charming suburb within commuting distance of New York,
Jamaica began to grow.
There still was no hospital, but most of the people who
were to play to dominant parts in organizing the Jamaica
Hospital already were on the scene, and others who were to
be important figures in its later development were beginning
to appear.
Among the physicians practicing in Jamaica at this time
were Drs. P.P Kissam, Wm.D. Wood, Clinton A. Belden, Charles
K. Belden and C.H. Barker. The Long Island Democrat of January
9, 1883, notes that "Dr. A. F. McKay, Homeopathic Physician
and Surgeon, who has recently come to reside among us, has
opened an office in the Rod and Rifle building,: The Rod
and Rifle Club was later to become the Jamaica Club. For
many years it was housed in its own home at the corner of
Herriman Avenue and Grove Street, now 161st Street and 90-th
Avenue. A few years ago the club sold this property and leased
an entire floor in the Chamber of Commerce Building, which
it has since occupied. It remains today the outstanding social
club of our community. On March 13, 1883, the local paper
reports that "Isaac L. Hardenbrook of this village has
passed the examinations of the Medical Department of the
University of the City of New York, and will receive his
degree as Doctor of Medicine at the commencement to be held
this evening at the Academy of Music." The Academy of
Music stood on the north side of Fourteenth Street just east
of Union Square, the center of the social life of the city
at that time. It was the scene of most of New York's brilliant
concerts and entertainment for many years and was only demolished
about fifteen years ago, long after the center of night life
has moved far uptown.
Dr. Hardenbrook practiced in Jamaica for many years thereafter,
and was a member of the first Medical Staff of Jamaica Hospital.
The genial President of our Jamaica Hospital Board of Trustees,
Mr. C. A. Ludlum, was receiving press notices early in life.
In a local paper of March 27, 1883, I found the following:
A young men's club to be known as the "Crescent Club" was
organized last week.
The following officers were elected: President, M.D.Fosdick; Vice President,
Howard Sutphin; Treasurer, C.A.Ludlum; Secretary, C. Doughty;
Steward, G.H. Creed, Jr. The object of the club is social
enjoyment and to totally enjoy bar and billiard room.
Mr. Ludlum tells me he has since reformed.
On January 3, 1884, occurred one of the bright social events
of the year. The Rev. Edwin B. Rice, rector of Grace Church,
was married to Miss Zelia C. Hicks, eldest daughter of
Major George A. Hicks, a well known citizen of Jamaica.
The ceremony was performed at Grace Church by the Bishop
of Long Island. Six other clergymen, friends of the bridegroom,
were in the chancel. Among the ushers was young George
K. Meynen.
In February, 1885, was note that "Mr. George Kissam
Meynen has been awarded that Dr. Valentine Mott Medal by
the faculty of New York University Medical College, for the
best volume of notes on clinical and operative surgery" as
well as being the recipient of Prof. Schaffer's special money
prize No. 2, for the best notes on orthopedic surgery.
Dr. Valentine Mott, in whose memory the Valentine Mott Medal
was given each year to the graduating student having the
best notes on clinical and operative surgery, was one of
the pioneer teachers and surgeons of America. He was born
at Glen Cove, Oyster Bay, Long Island, on August 20, 1785.
His father, Dr. Henry Mott, was a native of Hempstead, L.I.
who practiced in Hempstead and New York City for many years.
Valentine was privately tutored until 1804 when he entered
Columbia College, Where he attended a full course of medical
lectures. Meanwhile he studied medicine in the office of
a relative, Dr. Valentine Seaman.
He graduated in 1806 and went almost immediately to Europe
for further study. There was at that time practically on
opportunity for acquiring accurate information and clinical
experience in this country.
On his return to American in 1809 he was made Professor
of Surgery at Columbia College, which was merged with College
of Physicians and Surgeons in 1813. He continued as Professor
of Surgery until 1826, when he resigned to found with Drs.
Hosack, Mitchell, Francis and others the ill fated Rutgers
Medical College. This new institution, in spite of the presence
on its teaching staff of the best medical talent in New York,
continued in existence only four years.
Dr. Mott, however, continued in his brilliant surgical career,
and at his death on April 26th, 1865, left a name and reputation
that will always be remembered in the history of American
Surgery.
Dr. Meynen graduated in 1885 and established his practice
in Jamaica. He at once saw the need of a hospital in Jamaica
and became active in all future efforts to obtain one.
During the late 1880's, Jamaica was busy growing. There
was no organized movement for a hospital, probably because
our neighbors in Flushing had established, in 1884, the Flushing
Hospital and dispensary, the first hospital in Queens County.
However, the feeling persisted that Jamaica should have a
hospital of its own. On December 12, 1887, the Standard said
in an editorial:
This need becomes more apparent every year and is worthy
of the attention of our people. A large institution is not
wanted, but to go longer without any place to take the sick
or wounded ill not be creditable.
By 1891, public opinion had crystallized. The population
of the village had more than doubled since the first Hospital
Fair in 1883, and stood at 5,363, according to the Eagle
Almanac. On March 10, 1891, the following notice appeared
in the Democrat:
A meeting of the organized Circles of the King's Daughters
of this village will be held at the residence of Miss Jenny
Lewis on Saturday evening, March 14th, at 7:30 o'clock. As
this meeting is for the purpose of completing arrangements
for the Hospital Fair, which is to take place on April 9th,
it is necessary that all members be present.
Evidently the meeting was fruitful and produced a wide awake
publicity committee, because on April 7th the Democrat carried
the following four news items:
A fair in aid of the hospital fund will be held at the Opera
House (which also was the Town Hall and jail), this village,
on Thursday and Friday next under the auspices of the several
circles of the King's Daughters acting in concert. Miss Mary
Gale and Miss Amberman are in charge of the arrangements.
Elsewhere in the same issue:
The societies of King's Daughters Arcade on Thursday and
Friday afternoon and evening at the Town Hall. Everything
imaginable will be for sale. Supper will be served for fifty
cents. Ten cents admission.
And finally, in the same issue, a fourth story calculated
to stimulate public interest in the cause:
A gentleman has donated two lots of ground in our village
for a hospital purpose, and now the ladies intend to raise
money sufficient to erect a handsome and suitable building.
The issue of the Democrat of the following Tuesday tells
how it all turned out. The Fair, or Arcade, was a great success
socially and financially. The Democrat's account is so complete,
and so typical of the exuberant style of writing in use in
the nineties in rural journalism that I have copied it in
full.
The King's Daughters Arcade for the benefit of the Jamaica
Hospital was held at the Opera House on Thursday and Friday
afternoon and evening, April 9th and 10th, and was one of
the most successful affairs of the kind given in the village.
The combined organization of the King's Daughters was composed
of the following circles: Crown Circle connected with Grace
Episcopal church; the Mission, Every Day Ten and Benignant
Circles of the Presbyterian church; Worker in His Name Circle
of the Reformed church and the Emergency Circle of the Baptist
church; together with a circle composed of young girls called
the Busy Hands and a circle of children known as the Little
Laborers; making in all over one hundred members, and last
but not least by any means a circle of King's Sons numbering
twelve members.
The large room of the opera house was tastefully decorated
with arches of evergreen behind which the numerous booths
were arranged to form an arcade, which not being cumbered
with any heavy drapery looked airy and beautiful.
The motto of the order was suspended from the Stage curtain
and was composed of a silver cross on a deep purple ground
and in silver letters the general motto:
LOOK UP, NOT DOWN,
LOOK FORWARD, NOT BACK,
LOOK OUT, NOT IN,
LEND A HAND
The flower table in charge of Miss Gardiner, assisted by
a bevy of fair young ladies, was arranged in Japanese style,
and blossomed a perfect bower of beauty beneath the huge
and gaudy umbrella that formed its roof.
The lemonade well under the superb management of Miss Jenny
Lewis was never known to contain so cool or delicious a beverage
and was patronized to such an extent that the charming young
lady attendants had all the work they wanted to supply the
crowds of thirsty applicants, who left with beaming faces
happy in the possession of a pretty little souvenir in the
form of a silver cross.
The apron table in the care of Miss Ette Bedell, assisted
by a number of other young ladies, was so successful that
their large supply was nearly exhausted the first night,
and a great deal of credit is due these most faithful workers.
The bag table contained a perfect wilderness of bags of
all descriptions, useful and ornamental, large and small,
and the gracious lady manager, Mrs. Chas. Smith, and her
graceful helpers made every visitor so welcome and entertained
them so pleasantly that they were loath to move on.
The agate wear table in charge of Mrs. Jarvis and Grant
Morrell was one of the reigning features. The wear was generously
donated by the firm of Lelance and Grosjean of Woodhaven,
and the visitors showed their appreciation of the fact by
a generous patronage; all the articles were sold.
The art table, Miss Nettie Amberman, manger, was draped
in white and artistically trimmed with pale pink pomegranate
blossoms, and proved to be one of the most attractive tables.
All of the beautiful specimens of artistic handiwork exhibited
for sale were representative of our own home talent, and
made a showing not to be ashamed of; connected with this
table was a smaller one where visitors could try their fate
for the small sum of ten cents a chance, presided over by
two little girls, Maggie Snediker and Aggie Cornell. The
wee cards were called Kismets, and were all hand painted
and decorated with daisy ribbon; these were designed especially
for the fair and were original in every particular. They
were all sold and netted the table the neat sum of $20.00.
The idea of the miniature hospital was originated and carried
out by its amiable manager, Miss Louise Meynen. It consisted
of twenty-four perfectly made cots furnished with bedding
complete, each bed containing a doll who was supposed to
be suffering with some disease. One had a broken limb, which
was skillfully set in a plaster paris case, in real surgical
style by Dr. G.K. Meynen, who kindly lent his valuable assistance
and furnished all the details in miniature of a bona fide
hospital.
The fancy table presided over by Miss Mary R. Gale was situated
in front of the stage and reached the whole length. It fairly
groaned beneath its burden of lovely articles, and assumed
a most gorgeous appearance from the variety of colors that
adorned it. Every kind of fancy work imaginable could be
found here, and beside the quantities from our own Jamaica,
there were specimens from Ohio, Chicago, Washington, and
New York City.
The refreshments tables took up a greater part of the spacious
stage and made a beautiful and inviting appearance decked
with snowy damask, and dainty dishes, and a very animated
one when the dishes were filled with goodies, and the tables
crowded with smiling faces; this department was under the
able government of Mrs. S. J. Hendrickson and Mrs. Philip
Remson assisted by Miss Benham, Mrs. Lowery, Mrs. McGerry
and others.
Miss Hester W. Boyd had the supervision of the ice cream
table, assisted by a pretty group of bright eyed young girls,
becomingly arrayed in dainty lace cap; and all found their
time fully occupied in waiting on the worn and impatient
visitors.
The linen table was especially dainty in all its appointments.
Here were to be found the most beautiful drawn work and exquisitely
embroidered linen. It was well patronized and the smiling
faces of the lady attendants were equally attractive to the
liberal purchasers; this table was in charge of Mrs. Stuart
and Mrs. Clerke.
The Confectionery booth under the fair hands of Miss Florence
N. McCormick was one of the sweetest places in the room;
the large number of her young assistants made a charming
coterie and attracted large crowds of both old and young;
a quantity of candy made by the ladies was in great demand
and all voted this table one of the best.
The mystery table was under the management of Mrs. J.H.
Hobbs circle, Miss Mamie Everitt in charge, assisted by twelve
young ladies, who deserve a great deal of credit for their
perseverance and faithful, earnest work, their unknown packages
contained a fair equivalent for the price asked, and all
the purchasers seemed to be well contented with their bundles;
besides arranging all of this, they have together made a
quilt which is to be kept in reserve for the coming hospital.
The country store and post office was a unique feature of
the arcade, the King's Sons arranged this booth under the
wise direction of George Schoonmaker and A. M Morrell, Jr.
and was very successful; the post office created a fund of
amusement as there were foreign as well as local mails.
Donations were made by Weschler and Abraham, lamp, E. Ridley & Sons
of a painted wall pocket toilet case and whiskbroom and holder,
from A. Schlank a fine lamp, from Louis Miller a handsome
chair, from Mrs. Distler another handsome chair, from Granville
Yeaton a beautiful plush album, from James Goggns a ladies
handsome silk skirt, from Woolley Bros. a carving knife and
fork, from Mr. Greenbaum a lady's cloak, and from F. U. Patten
enough wall paper to cover a room in the hospital.
Votes were taken on Weschler & Abraham's lamp to be
presented to the young doctor in the village receiving the
largest number; Dr. P. M. Wood was the lucky winner.
Two prizes were put up for the ministers. The plush album,
and the chair presented by Louis Miller. Rev. Dr. Poulson
received the former and Rev. J. H. Hobbs the latter.
The silk skirt was to be voted to a King's Daughter, Miss
Victoria Henery being the recipient.
The carving knife and fork was to be given to the person
guessing the number of peas in a quart jar. Sidney Sullivan
received it, guessing within five of the number.
A very handsome plush sofa pillow embroidered with poppies
was presented to Miss C. M Amberman, president, and a beautiful
hand painted screen wall pocket to Miss Mary Gale, Vice President,
from the ladies as a mark of their approval of the good management
and nice arrangement of all the affairs these ladies had
under their supervision. It is needless to say that these
kind tokens of regard were most gratefully received.
The arcade was a grand success in every particular as the
ladies have cleared above all expenses the very handsome
sum of One Thousand Dollars; and they all wish it to be distinctly
understood that they do not intend to try to build a handsome
edifice, only to begin on a simple scale. It is proposed
to hire two or three rooms in a convenient locality and to
furnish them in readiness so that a proper place can be had
when needed, and the King's Daughters expect to supply this
to the village and to continue it until at some future time
a hospital may indeed arise.
All the work, and it has not been easy, and each and every
one of the ladies connected with the affair deserve equal
honor and credit: has been most cheerfully done and "In
His Name" offered with a true and heartfelt prayer,
and a faithful knowledge that He will indeed bless the effort
His noble followers have made, and lay with reverence at
His hold feet.
Thus the example was set. Quickly the whole village of Jamaica
got behind the project. Various entertainment was held, and
all of them brought additions to the fund. Items in the contemporary
press tell the story.
In one Issue we find:
The West End Tennis Cub has ceased to exist. A resolution
was passed before the disbandment, to donate the funds
in the treasury, amounting to $7.00, to the hospital fund.
In another issue:
A company of children, the leaders of whom were Emma Williamson and Willie
Burtis, grandchildren of William Williamson of Jamaica South, managed a fair
recently, selling aprons and other articles made by themselves, and realized
the sum of $25.25, which they presented to the hospital fund. The ladies in
charge highly appreciated the gift, and consider that the little folks deserve
a great deal of credit.
In still another issue:
At a game of baseball last Wednesday about $10 was realized for the hospital
fund.
And on June 9th, 1891, the following appeared under the caption:
OUR HOSPITAL
The citizens of Jamaica will in a short time see in full
operation an institution long talked of, an emergency hospital.
The building recently leased by the United King's Daughters,
who have the hospital project in hand, is rapidly being renovated
and rendered suitable for the purpose to which it is to be
devoted. It is proposed to open the institution on the Fourth
of July. In connection with the opening the ladies propose
to give a sort of fete on the grounds around the building,
which is a quaint old structure and which will doubtless
appear picturesque on this occasion. The grounds will be
decked with the national colors, and there will be opportunities
to part with money at fruit stands, lemonade wells, ice cream
and candy tables, all the proceeds to go to the hospital
fund. The rent of the temporary house, $15 a month, is to
be provided by each local circle of the King's Daughters
respectively. The site of the new building is an important
question soon to be decided. Among the latest offers to sell
is that of two lots on Division Street, near the railroad.
Three weeks later, on June 30, 1891, we find a news item:
THE JAMAICA HOSPITAL
The citizens of Jamaica will in a short time see in full operation an institution
long talked of, an emergency hospital. The building recently leased by the
United King's Daughters, who have the hospital project in hand, is rapidly
being renovated and rendered suitable for the purpose to which it is to be
devoted. It is proposed to open the institution on the Fourth of July. In
connection with the opening the ladies propose to give a sort of fete on
the grounds around the building, which is a quaint old structure and which
will doubtless appear picturesque on this occasion. The grounds will be decked
with the national colors, and there will be opportunities to part with money
at fruit stands, lemonade wells, ice cream and candy tables, all the proceeds
to go to the hospital fund. The rent of the temporary house, $15 a month,
is to be provided by each local circle of the King's Daughters respectively.
The site of the new building is an important question soon to be decided.
Among the latest offers to sell is that of two lots on Division Street, near
the railroad.
Three weeks later, on June 30, 1891, we find a news item:
THE JAMAICA HOSPITAL
The subscription list on behalf of the proposed emergency
hospital in Jamaica is constantly growing. The amount so
far pledged is $5,350, and there will doubtless be no trouble
whatever in raising the full amount required. The question
of a site has not yet been determined upon. The lots in Division
Street are being pressed, but the United King's Daughters,
by whose efforts the money was raised, which will pay for
the necessary land, do not take kindly to them. No such a
building should ever be erected near a railroad, especially
near a depot.
And then an important notice:
COME ONE, COME ALL
The organized Circles of King's Daughters will hold a Festival,
on the grounds of the Temporary Hospital, adjoining Fulton
and Canal Streets, on July 4th, afternoon and evening.
Cake, lemonade, ice cream and confectionery will be for sale. The Hospital
building will also be open for inspection. Ella W. Everett, Sec.
Once again the ladies scored a success. The Democrat of
July 7th tells us briefly:
The King's Daughters fair held in the yard of the temporary
hospital on Fulton Street, just east of Canal Street, were
very largely attended after the firebells were rung. We learn
something like $200 was cleared. The hospital is progressing
finely. The interior of the building is being painted and
the walls papered as rapidly as funds are raised. Three beds
have been put up and are in order. Donations of any useful
articles will be thankfully received by the committee.
Thus, without any further fanfare, the temporary Jamaica
Hospital was open. The first patient was admitted on July
28th.
The building was an old dwelling of one and a half stories,
of frame construction. It sat well back from the street,
surrounded by shade trees and a well-appointed lawn. Entrance
was through a gateway in a gleaming picket fence. Inside,
off the front wall, were three rooms. One contained two beds,
and the others contained one bed each. This was the total
capacity of the original Jamaica Hospital. Behind these rooms
were the living quarters of the matron, Mrs. Mary Van Nostrand.
Neither doctors nor nurses had any official connection with
the institution, but all the village physicians were invited
to bring their patients in for care and treatment.
From 1891 through the first four months of 1898, 236 persons
were received a patients in the temporary building. And although
the original plan was to handle only accident cases, necessity
dictated a different course. When the temporary quarters
finally were abandoned, the Democrat told the story of achievement:
In less than seven years, 236 patients, many of them severe
surgical cases, were received in the temporary building.
Though the original design of the Hospital was the care of victims of accident,
our cases have not been exclusively of that character, but persons and sufferers
from fevers, rheumatism, paralysis, sun stroke and general debility have also
received treatment, and there were only 22 deaths of patients in the Hospital.
With and without fetes and fairs, the community supported
the cause handsomely from the start. For example, on the
day the first patient was admitted, two contributions were
received. One, of $50, had been raised at a picnic held by
the Distler Hose Company. The other, of $4.50, constituted
all the money in the treasury of the Lott Society of Woodhaven.
While the Jamaica Hospital's first home was temporary,
the Hospital itself was permanent. So the founders applied
to Albany for a charter of incorporation, which was granted
on February 20th, 1892.
With the incorporation of its hospital, Jamaica bade farewell
to an era, an era during which the village was peopled largely
by descendants of the earliest settlers. Some of its residents
had gone to school when the poet Walt Whitman was a Jamaica
village schoolmaster. It was a community of God-fearing people,
beautiful trees and well-kept gardens. At the same time, it
was more or less unavoidably a village of gaslit and frequently
very muddy and unsightly streets, with only one telephone
in town, with no central water supply, and with opposition
being voiced in the press to such improvements as electric
lighting and home deliveries of mails. But just about the
time Jamaica Hospital was founded, a change set in. The Democrat
on March 24th, 1891, recorded that "twenty-one subscribers
for telephones have been secured in this village.
It is probable that a central telephone office will be established
at Dykes and Watts real estate office." The surmise
was correct. The real estate office became the first Jamaica
exchange. The first telephone, Jamaica 1, was given to J.
Tyler Watts, and was from that time held by the Watts family
until 1940. With the institute of the dial phone the number
became JA.6-0001. Naturally, the practicing physicians of
the village were among the first telephone subscribers.
The Neighborhood
Merchants along Fulton Street had begun installing electric
lights early in 1888, a few weeks after the electric trolley
line opened. And on December 6th, 1887, a local newspaper
boasted:
Some 25 houses in the village are having water pipes put through them in anticipation
of the turning on of water from the new Water Works. Who says Jamaica is not
moving?
After one more backward glance, we shall end our story
of pre-hospital Jamaica. We close the era with the village
suffering growing pains. In the spring of 1891, workmen were
constructing the Adikes Brothers building at the corner of
Fulton and Ray Streets (Jamaica Avenue and 153rd). In digging
the foundation, they undermined the building just east of
their construction, causing it partially to collapse. Several
workmen had narrowly escaped from severe injury or death.
This accident naturally made the headlines in the local press.
I mention it here because one of the Adikes, the Secretary
of our present Board of Trustees. The building which partially
collapsed was owned by Mr. Richard Neail, the father of Dr.
Howard W. Neail, the 1939-1940 president of our Medical Board.
The First Permanent Hospital
The first permanent Jamaica Hospital was formally opened on
June 18th, 1898, in a new building erected on the east side
of New York Avenue, a short distance north of South Street.
It was opened, not because the Trustees had a great deal of
money in their keeping, but rather in spite of the fact that
they had very little. The controlling fact was that the community
was growing very rapidly, and the little temporary quarters
were woefully inadequate. The new site had been selected in
1892, when the Trustees had a chance to buy five lots for
$1,000, and made the investment.
In April 1897, Jamaica Hospital’s total cash on hand
was $3,000, but it seemed imperative to gamble on the future.
In the short few years since the opening of the temporary
building, our sleepy Long Island village had changed to a
bustling suburb. To the west, the truck farms that had lain
between Jamaica and East New York had become, first, real
estate developments, and then, with startling speed, populous
communities – Richmond Hill and Woodhaven. Outright
annexation of Jamaica to the City of New York was only a year
away. So was the Spanish-American War, with a consequent overwhelming
demand for Long Island hospital facilities, although that
was something the Trustees couldn’t have foreseen.
Nevertheless, the decision was made. Plans were drawn up
under the direction of a Building Committee composed of Mrs.
C. H. Harris, Mrs. PH. Remsen and Mrs. J. A. Kehlbeck. Jamaica
was divided into zones, and intensively canvassed for funds.
Ground was broken for the new hospital on September 9th,
1897, and the cornerstone was laid a month later, with all
the village clergymen participating in the exercises. Miss
Mary R. Gale, the president of the Board, laid the cornerstone,
using a silver trowel presented to her by other members of
the Board of Trustees.
A Jamaica builder, Valentine Bangert, had the general contract.
The trustees authorized him to employ Stephen Carman of Jamaica
to do the mason work, and George W. Perry of Jamaica as plumber.
A pair of Jamaica architects, Messrs. Tuthill and Higgins,
had drawn the plans.
The over-all cost of construction was set by contract a $10,500.
The new year, 1891, dawned with ominous symptoms of world
unrest. The people of Cuba were fighting to free themselves
from Spanish domination. Americans were strongly favorable
to the Cuban cause. During January, the United States battleship
Maine was sent to Havana, ostensibly on a friendly visit,
but also, perhaps, to protect
American lives and property. The Maine entered Havana harbor
on January 25th. Three weeks later the battleship was blown
apart by a tremendous explosion, with a loss of 266 American
lives. An American board of inquiry made an investigation
and reported on
March 21st that the explosion had occurred outside the hull
of the ship. On April 25th, Congress declared war. Volunteers
were immediately called for and the was spirit spread over
the country. Jamaica produced her share of volunteers. Thousands
of others passed through Jamaica on their way to Camp Black,
in Hempstead, the principle mobilization
point for New York State. Camp Black was named after the
incumbent Governor of the State.
Then, as now, concern was being expressed about the large
number of men rejected as physically unfit for military service.
The editor of the Democrat put it this way:
“In the Civil War the rejections by army examiners
amounted to 13 percent. Now they are about 40 percent. The
race is not running down. Ninety percent of them cannot be
enlisted.”
The fact is that in the 1880’s and 1890’s a
very large number of people thought cigarette smoking was
pretty close to the root of all evil. We find this superstition
reflected in the Jamaica youth who had been known to smoke
cigarettes died of pneumonia. The headline on the story of
his death was:
Died From Smoking
Cigarettes
Another interesting story reflecting this anticigarette
viewpoint is the following, taken from one of our Jamaica
papers:
Cigarettes Mad Him Insane
Simon Koplahn, a tailor, of Riverhead, became suddenly insane
on Monday. He attempted to commit suicide by jumping into
the river, but was rescued and taken into custody. He became
violent and attempted to take his life several times during the
day. He quieted somewhat in the evening and was placed in
the jail for the night. Tuesday morning he was removed to
the Almshouse at Yaphank. Koplahn is about twenty-one
years of age and went to Riverhead about three year ago
from Patchogue, and for the past year has been employed
B. J. R. & J. H. Perkins. He was an industrious and steady
young man. Overwork and the incessant use of cigarettes
are believed to be the cause of his insanity.
Cigarettes or no cigarettes, Uncle Sam raised a sizeable
army. Camp Black in Hempstead became a Mecca for visitors,
especially on Sundays, when the roads to the eastward were
crowded with travelers on bicycles and in horse-drawn vehicles
of all sorts. Contemporary news items record that the fair
sex was plentifully represented on these excursions and gave
color and spirit to the scene.
A City Grows
In the midst of all this excitement, Queens County was
cut in two.
The eastern part became the new county of Nassau. The western
part, including Jamaica, became part of New York City.
Meanwhile the King’s Daughters, who never had relinquished
their leadership of the Jamaica Hospital movement, single-mindedly
concentrated on building and equipping its new home. On April
5th, the local papers carried a gentle hint: “The Jamaica
Emergency Hospital has no objection to being a legatee under
the wills of wealthy persons who have no needy relatives.”
On April 19th, the following news item appeared in the Democrat:
The various circles of the King’s Daughters will
hold a supper and Cake Sale, on Wednesday, April 27th,
from 5 to 8 P.M. The proceeds will be devoted to the
purchase of gas fixtures for the new Jamaica Hospital,
which will soon be ready for use. A substantial supper
will be furnished for 35 cents; ice cream for 10 cents
per plate; and home-made cakes at reasonable prices.
In the same issue, this item appeared:
The Jamaica Emergency Hospital will remove
from its present quarters on Fulton Street to its new
building some time before the first of May. The plans
of the directors had to be altered somewhat on account
of this removal, which until a few days ago was not
contemplated. As yet the new building is not completed,
but the lease of the present building expires May 1st,
and the owner refuses to let it monthly. Miss Gale,
president of the association, said the managent had
intended to celebrate the occasion, but it will be
deferred until the completion of the hospital build-
ing, which will be about the middle of June.
Just as the original, temporary Jamaica Hospital was made
possible by the small contributions of many people, so the
first permanent Jamaica Hospital was financed through the
good will of all. Slowly but surely the fund grew.
The supper and cake sale held in Fraternity Hall netted $100.
About two weeks later, on a Saturday afternoon, children of
the town raised another $19.50. One group held a fair on the
east end of Richters Hotel stoop, on Beaver street, and took
in $7.00. Another group of children, from seven to twelve
years old, put on an entertainment in the carriage house behind
the Liberty Avenue home of Ex-Mayor Twombly. Tickets were
sold at ten cents each. This paid not only for admission but
for ice cream and cake as well. The net proceeds were $12.50.
The Democrat carried a story on it:
A temporary stage was erected, with a mammoth American
Flag as a curtain. There were potted plants, small flags, etc., as
decorations. Through the courtesy of B. F. Everett, camp chairs
were provided for the visitors. The program consisted of singing,
dialogues, recitations, etc., and were under the supervision
of Miss Anna Twombly and proved decidedly interesting. Those
taking part were: Anna and Bessie Twombly, Edith Hyatt, Ethel
Wood, Anna Everett, Lillian Scott, Bessie Scott, Everett Lockwood
and Willie Tenny.
Along about the same time, we read in the contemporary
press that Jamaica had said goodbye to the slithery mud which
for so long had constituted the surface of Fulton Street.
From the Democrat of April 26th:
Jamaica, last Wednesday, had a gala day in honor of its
newly
paved Fulton Street. This street, which now presents a smooth
surface from the easterly end of the village (that was) to
the lower end of the 26th Ward, was the especial object of
the celebration, and right heartily did the business men and
the citizens generally enter into the festivities. There was
a grand procession of fire companies, societies, tradesmen,
etc., and with banners flying and bands playing, great enthusiasm
was created.
Even on this gala day, we learn that the Jamaica Hospital
is not being neglected. In the same issue, the editor of the
Democrat comments that the Jamaica Improvement Celebration,
having a surplus of $75 in its treasury, has turned the money
over to the Jamaica Hospital building fund.
Yet in spite of all the community enthusiasm, there wasn’t
enough cash to finish the building. After mush discussion,
however, it was announced that the building would be finished
anyway. The Brooklyn Times carried an item explaining the
decision. The Times pointed out that a small mortgage an
encumbrance which the Trustees didn’t want was going
to be necessary. The Trustees were won over by the argument
that it would be better to have a mortgage, however distasteful,
than to have to undertake new work later, when the building
was being used for hospital purposes. The Brooklyn Times,
added, however, that contributions were still needed, that
the Trustees had done a most noble work so far, and still
depended on public cooperation.
For the record, the amount of money raised by the mortgage
was $2,500. The Trustees defrayed the rest of the $10,500
building cost with cash.
Meanwhile, churchwomen of all faiths continued to be the
Jamaica Hospital’s best friends. In the Democrat of
April 24th:
A number of ladies connected with St. Monica’s Roman
Catholic Churches, of Jamaica, with Mrs. Dr. T. J. Flynn,
have collected $170.00, With which they have furnished a
room in the Jamaica Hospital.
Elsewhere in the same issue:
The ladies connected with the Reformed Church are putting
forth special efforts to raise a sufficient sum with which
to furnish a room at Jamaica Hospital.
A few weeks later the triumphant opening of the first permanent
building was to become an accomplished fact. But before we
record that historic occurrence, let us preserve for posterity
a picture of what our community was like in that crowded year
of
1898.
The bicycle craze was at its height. Everybody was riding
the “Safety”, which had replaced the high wheeler
of the 1880’s. Clubs of wheelmen and wheelwomen were
numerous. The ladies rode encumbered by voluminous long skirts,
leg o’mutton sleeves and wide brimmed hats. Most men
had shaved their beards, but still gloried in villainous
moustaches. They wore derby hats or hard straws, depending
on the season, and the wing collar was giving way to the
high stiff collar which was to become a familiar adornment
down through the early 1900’s. Thus garbed, the clubs
of wheelmen and wheel women took scheduled trips through
the country and were an early factor in the movement for
better roads.
But such goings-on! We read in an 1898 issue of the Democrat:
There is a remarkable craze this year for the very low-dropped
handled bars, but it is not clear where the advantage lies.
The average would be scorcher is hardly ever seen holding
the grips, but as a rule clasps the handle bar right at the
stem. This is regarded as decidedly foolish and dangerous
practice.
And in another issue that spring:
It seems Jamaica’s quiet Sundays are things of the
past. Fulton
Street on Sunday was a sort of pleasure ground with many
travelers. Camp Black seemed to be the place of interest
and wheelmen and wagons were numerous. Several times during
the morning between eight and twelve o’clock the wheelmen
were counted and they averaged over 100 a minute. At eleven
o’clock over 600 were counted passing a given point
in less than five minutes. In the afternoon a steady stream
of them were passing homeward bound.
Accidents were numerous, but none very serious. Wheels
were seen all along the roadway laid up for repairs. The
car track upset a great many. In returning home the St. Patrick
Wheelmen had spill near New York Avenue. One of the number
went to cross the track and fell. His follower ran over him,
and in less time than it takes to tell, six or eight lay
in a heap. The first man to fall cut quite a hole in his
head, and one of the others had his leg cut. No matter how
hard the cyclist is bumped, as long as his wheel is whole
and he can stand up, he is ready to go it again.
At about the same time, there came the first harbinger of
yet another form of transportation:
John H. Eldert has bought one of the Barrows Electrical carriages
now on view at the Electrical Show in Madison Square Garden,
New York City. They cost $1,200 each. Frederick W. Dunton
is president of the Barrows Company.
Mr. Dunton was one of the most prominent real estate developers
on Long Island. Two of his outstanding developments were Hollis,
Connecticut, and Dunton was later to become one of the outstanding
workers for and benefactors of Jamaica Hospital.
Against this background, the new hospital building on New
York Avenue was opened on May 1st. On May 4th the first patient
was admitted. The name of this unsung hero or heroine, who
braved the tumult of hammer and saw, is not on record. But
the surroundings to which he or she came were anything but
what should be expected in a hospital. It was many weeks before
the building was to be really ready to receive patients. The
pioneer Jamaica Hospital Medical Staff consisted of eleven
members-
Dr. George K. Meynen, Philip M. Wood, Austin J. Blanchard,
Ralph Macfarland, Henry A. Auger, Charles K. Belden, J. C.
Wharton, Samuel Hendrickson, T. J. Flynn, Herbert T. Noble
and Isaac L. Hardenbrook. Of this pionerr group only one member,
Dr. Noble, is alive today.
The organization meeting of the Medical Staff took place
on Friday evening, June 3rd, 1898. Miss Mary Gale, in her
capacity as President of the Hospital Association, called
the meeting at her home on Fulton Street. Drs. Meynen, Flynn,Auger,
Blanchard, Noble, Wharton and Macfarland attended. The Staff
organized by electing Dr. Meynen as President, Dr. Wood as
Vice President and Dr. Blanchard as Secretary. Drs. Augers,
Hendrickson and Macfarland were chosen as the Executive Committee.
A committee made up of Drs. Auger, Noble and Wharton was
appointed to draft by-laws.
The formal, ceremonial opening of the first permanent building
occurred on Saturday, June 18, 1898. The event was recorded
in considerable detail in the Long Island Democrat of June
21st. We read that the Rev. L. K. Moore of the Methodist Episcopal
Church read the Parable of the Good Samaritan and offered
prayer. Rev. Edgar Tilton, Jr., of the First Reformed Church,
Rev. Ignatius Zeller of St. Mary’s R.C. Church, Rev.
F. Hartig of the Second Reformed Church and Rev. Edwin Richmond
of the Baptist Church made brief addresses, suitable to the
occasion. Rev. J. Howard
Hobbs of the Presbyterian Church, receiving the building from
Miss Mary Gale, President of the Board of Trustees, offered
the Prayer of Dedication, and Rev. H. O. Ladd of Grace Episcopal
Church gave the Memorial Address on the life and character
Of Miss Cornelia King, in whose memory the operating room
was built and equipped by her niece, Miss Mary R. King. Mr.
Ladd also pronounced the benediction. Having set forth those
salient facts, the story in the Democrat continues:
We are proud that we have a hospital, which, although small,
is equipped in a thorough manner with the most modern appliances.
The rooms were crowded with people, many of them from out
of town, among them being a delegation from the recently formed
county of Nassau where a similar hospital is to be built.
Mayor Van Wyck and Controller Coler had both been invited,
but sent their regrets. The credit for the satisfactory structure
and admirable arrangement of the rooms and appliances is in
a large measure due to Mrs. C. H. Harris, the chairman of
the building committee, upon whose shoulders, through force
of circumstances, almost all of the responsibility for supervision
of the work has fallen. The others associated on the committee
with her were Mrs. Kehlbeck and Mrs. Philip Remson.
On the first floor, beginning at the front door, at the
left, is the
Office furnished by Crown Circle, King’s Daughters.
Opening out of this is a physicians’ room, furnished
by Mrs. James C. Hendrickson. At the right of the entrance
is the dining room for the private patients, furnished by
Mizpah Circle, King’s Daughters. On this, the south
side of the house, running out into the extension, are two
large wards. They are both of the same size, and have six
beds in each. The women’s ward at the right of the staircase
was furnished by the women of the Dutch Reformed Church. On
the other side of the staircase is the male ward, furnished
by the women of Grace Episcopal Church. In the northeast corner
is the only private room on the first floor; it was fitted
up by Mrs. A. A. DeGrauw, In memory of her mother. The windows
here, as are nearly all the windows in the house, are fitted
with Venetian blinds.
The handsomest and most complete part of the hospital is
the hospital operating room. It is in a special addition in
the centre of the north side of the house. It was entirely
constructed and equipped by Mary Rhinelander King in the memory
of her aunt, Miss Cornelia King. Miss King, who died about
a year ago, at the age of 75 years, gave her life to charitable
work. It was her great desire to see a hospital in Jamaica.
A large bronze memorial tablet inscribed to her is placed
on one of the walls of the operating room. The walls and floors
are in white enameled tile, and all the plumbing is nickeled.
All the furniture in the room, with the exception of an etherizing
stretcher, presented by the Tamaqua Wheelmen, was given by
Miss King’s niece.
The broad hall, which runs through the building, was furnished
by the Monday Afternoon Club, of Richmond Hill.
One of the finest wards in the hospital is the children’s
ward,
On the second floor over the women’s ward. It has been
furnished in a lavish manner, as a memorial to Mabel F. Brenton,
wife of Ellsworth S. Skidmore. It contains almost everything
that could be thought of for the comfort and amusement of
the little ones. On the same floor is a private room, handsomely
furnished by the Catholic people of Jamaica. It is one of
the most attractive of the private rooms, and is to be called
St. Monica’s private room. Bird’s eye maple furniture,
a heavy brass bedstead, handsome rugs, pictures and hangings
are among the furnishings. Other private rooms are furnished
by Mrs. John R. Carpenter, Mrs. S. A. Higbie and Mrs. Robert
Higbie (jointly). A special room has been reserved by the
trolley road for its employees and the victims of its accidents.
The large ward over the main ward is assigned to memorial
beds. Among them is one given by Mrs. Carrie Burtis in memory
of her son, Willis, and another by Mrs. S. S. Engs of Richmond
Hill, in memory of her daughter. As furnished, the hospital
will accommodate 26 patients in wards and 5 in private rooms.
The top story or attic is large and commodious. It is so
arranged that it can be fitted up as a ward in case of need.
All the sanitary arrangements throughout the building are
of a modern type. The number of baths is especially noticeable.
The house is screened, and is lighted by electricity throughout.
No regular fund has yet been obtained for operating the
hospital, but it is thought that as soon as the results of
the women’s work so far become apparent, no difficulty
will be experienced in the matter of funds. As a result of
a personal appeal to Mayor Van Wyck by Mrs. Harris, the Board
of Estimate has appropriated $1,000 a year of the City’s
money for the hospital. For this appropriation the charity
patients of the city in that part of the borough of Queens
will be cared for. The doctors of Jamaica have offered their
services to the hospital without compensation.
By design the outside of the new building was made as plain
as possible, it being the idea to put as much money as possible
into the necessary equipment of the interior. The main part
of the building is 51 by 30 feet, with a wing on the south
26 by 38 feet. On the north is as small ell 15 by 10 feet.
It is the operating room, planned so as to get the northwest
light.
The lower floor is constructed on the English basement
plan. In the front is the kitchen and ward dining room. On
the south side is the heating plant, which furnishes both
direct and indirect heat. There are also laundries and cupboards
on the floor.
On the north side is the entrance for receiving patients.
A feature of the house is the width of doors and windows,
for convenience in moving patients and for better ventilation.
Near the receiving door is the emergency room, fitted up
with a few beds for patients who stay only a few hours. There
is a large lift running from the basement to the attic. It
is commodious enough for several stretchers. In the closets
in the basement is a complete collection of all manner of
utensils of agate ware, given by Mrs. A. Cordier.
Jamaica Hospital was past the landmark of its ceremonial opening and dedication.
Most of its beds still were waiting for their first patients. During the
public inspection, some people were heard to say that the new building was
bigger than it needed to be, and that is would be a long time before every
bed was filled.
Little they knew of what the next few months would bring!
For God and Country
The Jamaica Hospital had been settled in its first permanent
home only a few weeks when heavily loaded transport ships
began carrying sick and wounded American soldiers home from
the war in Cuba. They were landed at Montauk Point, where
the War Department had established a hastily improvised debarkation
and hospital center, Camp Wikoff, named in honor of Col.
Charles A. Wikoff, named in honor of Col. Charles A. Wikoff
who was killed on July 1st, 1898, at San Diego, Cuba.
Soon this camp among the Montauk dunes was filled with
24,000 troops-17,000 infantry and 7,000 cavalry. Its hospital
facilities were tremendously over taxed. Soldiers were dying
by scores, without the semblance of adequate care. Some had
grievous wounds. Others were suffering from the dreaded yellow
fever or from malaria or their after effects. Hundreds of
them were shipped in to New York City for treatment. One
day two soldiers died on a New York bound train just before
it reached the Jamaica station. They were not Jamaica boys,
but they were some mothers’ sons, and the tragedy of
it spurred Jamaica into quick and effective action.
The Jamaica Hospital wasn’t yet completely finished
and ready for its full complement of patients, but the Trustees
decided to throw it open anyway, for the wounded soldiers.
They soon filled every available inch of space in the new
building. Dr. Noble tells me cots were placed even in the
elevator shaft. Jamaica’s epic of service in the hour
of need is well described in H.O. Ladd’s “Origin
and History of Grace Church,” as follows:
An opportunity for Grace Church to cooperate with other
churches in Jamaica and other villages, in a work of Christian
humanity and patriotism in the summer of 1898, brought together
their active workers in caring for the sick and wounded soldiers
transported from Cuba in the Spanish American War. The Jamaica
Hospital Relief Society was organized to relieve the hospital
authorities from the great care and expense involved in such
humane work. On Long Island were located two great camps of
United States soldiers of this war, Camp Black at Hempstead,
for the concentration and instruction of volunteer regiments
and recruits from the eastern states, and Camp Wikoff at Montauk,
to receive the sick and wounded brought back from the West
India Islands and malarial districts of the South. There were
at times 10,000 to 20,000 soldiers in each camp. A great military
camp was inaugurated in a few weeks at Montauk Point, where
steamboats and transports landed direct from Cuba the fever
stricken and wounded soldiers.
Thousands lay in long rows of hospital tents, sick and
dying and exposed to infection from innumerable flies and
insects, that filled the hot tents. The water was also a
detriment to health or recovery. These soldiers died by scores
and hundreds every day, and the burying grounds opened on
the Point swept by the Atlantic breezes were rapidly dotted
with wooden headboards.
There was a call to distribute these invalid and dying
soldiers into the hospitals in the seaboard cities along
the Long Island Sound, and in New York and New Jersey.
The Jamaica Hospital Board surrendered temporarily their
new building on New York Avenue and facilities for nursing
to the Jamaica Hospital Relief Society, which men and women
of all the religious societies in town joined, contributing
to its funds. They also offered and gave their personal services
to the Society to nurse and care for thirty-four patients
first brought from Camp Wikoff, and subsequently to another
installment which filled the hospital to its utmost capacity.
The officers of the Jamaica Hospital Relief Society were
president, Rev.H.O. Ladd, secretary, Richard W. Rhoades;
treasurer, Stanley Jordan; vice presidents, Mrs. Clinton
a. Belden, Mrs. W. E. Everett, Mrs. Lewis L. Fosdick, Mrs.
Erwin Richmond, Mrs. Feodor Barnhardi, Mrs. T. J. Flynn,
Mrs. T. W. Lewis, Mrs. Franz Hartig. Executive committee,
chairman, J. Browne, Jr., Mrs. Manning Smith, M.D., Mrs.
W. E. Everett, Mrs. L. L. Fosdick, Mrs. C. A. Belden. Committee
on volunteer aid, Mrs. Manning Smith, M.D. Mrs. Philip H.
Remson. Committee on Sustenance and clothing, Mrs. Charles
H. Harris, Mrs. R. Purchase, Miss Maude Ryder, Miss Carey,
Mrs. E. E. Detheridge.
Miss Gale, the president of the Hospital, Mrs. Harris and
Mrs. Remson of the Trustees and the whole Medical Staff directed
by Dr. George K Meynen, the Chief Surgeon, gave unwearied
effort, and there was a gratifying harmony between the management
and voluntary helpers. Mrs. J. Browne, assisted by the firemen
of Jamaica, attended daily to the arrangements for supplies,
transfers and night watching. Rev. Dr. Ladd superintended
and effected the transportation from Camp Wikoff with the
cooperation of the medical authorities there.
When the hospital seemed full, one Sunday evening, twenty-five
additional patients arrived, and were disposed of, severely
testing the skill and patience of those in charge. The citizens
of Jamaica and Richmond Hill, and Hollis and Queens contributed
liberally with supplies, and the churches made offerings,
which were increased by private gifts of individuals.
Some of theses soldiers were very sick, others convalescent
from malarial and typhoid fevers. Not one patient died, in
the three or four months that the hospital was thus used.
The soldiers were mostly members of the U. S. Cavalry regiments
that had been in the battles and trenches around Santiago.
They showed their gratitude in many ways. Extra trained nurses
were provided with the voluntary ones, who served in the
emergency.
Mrs. Eldora Ward, the superintendent of the hospital, directed
with skill the volunteers who offered themselves from the
homes and churches of Jamaica. Those who served for Grace
Church in this capacity as nurses were Miss Gale, Mrs. Kirby,
Mrs. Detheridge, Mrs. George K. Meynen and Miss Pauline Goodman.
From other congregations Misses Alma Chadwick, Kittie E.
Lampman, Louise Baker, Mrs. Manning Smith, M.D.,
Misses Luckey and Gertrude B. Browne.
The attendants in care of sustenance and diet were Mrs.
C. K. Beldin, Mrs. F. F. McClintock, Mrs. Manning; Smith,
M.D., Misses Luckey and Gertrude B. Browne.
Dr. H.S. Harris, Chief Surgeon of the Cavalry Division Hospital,
Montauk, and the chairman of the Committee Military Affairs
at Washington for President McKinley, wrote letters, expressive
of their appreciation and gratitude for the work done by
the officials of the Society, and the citizens. There were
in all fifty-eight (soldiers) under their care for several
months.
An accurate account of the receipts and expenditures were
kept by the Executive Committee, and by request reported
afterwards with vouchers to the War Department at Washington,
from which was received over $850 in reimbursement, of which
was expended about $350 in providing an X-ray apparatus for
the hospital, and the remainder was given to the building
fund of the hospital.
That is the record of Jamaica, and Jamaica Hospital, in
caring for the sick and wounded soldiers of the Spanish-American
War. Jamaica took its contingent from Montauk, where men
had been dying wholesale, and saved all the lives with which
it was entrusted.
The war ended on December 10th, 1898, with the signing of
a peace treaty, and the nation went back to its peacetime
pursuits. That is, all went back to peace time pursuits except
the thousand of dead, the invalids and the permanently disabled.
We Grow
In our early years, we could receive patients, but we couldn't
go and get them. We acquired our first horse drawn ambulance
in 1902, when the City allocated funds for its operation
and maintenance. Up to that time, the injured and the seriously
ill were brought to the receiving entrance by delivery and
express wagons.
Of course the ambulance was an improvement, but it had its
limitations. It could make only one trip in the same length
of time that our present equipment uses to make half a dozen
trips. The oldest member of our present equipment uses to
make half a dozen trips. The oldest member of our present
Medical Board, Dr. L. Howard Moss, remembers the old ambulance
well, because he became a member of the Jamaica Hospital
staff in 1903. Up to that time, incidentally, Dr. Moss had
to operate all his cases at his patients' homes, and carried
around a complete surgical kit, even including a portable
operating table, for that purpose. Well, Dr. Moss tells me
that once after he joined our Staff, the old horse-drawn
ambulance was out on a call when an emergency summons was
received. A child, whose home was on the south side, was
acutely ill. To wait for the ambulance to return would have
endangered the child's life. Some resourceful person thought
of a baby carriage, which was stored in the hospital attic.
It was hauled out and sent to get the child, with precious
minutes saved. This story of the perambulator ambulance made
all the metropolitan newspapers.
Cold figures show that in these early years in its new home,
the Jamaica Hospital was increasingly fulfilling its function
of service to the community. In the fiscal year ending February
20th, 1900, 253 patients were cared for and 93 operations
performed, whereas only 236 patients had been cared for in
our entire seven years in our temporary home. During the
year ending February 20th, 1901, 491 patients were treated
and 196 operations performed.
Of course these figures seem small by comparison with our
more recent record of service. For instance, in 1940, the
records show that we had 6,193 bed patients, 7,351 clinic
patients, and 3,370 operations performed. And yet, as we
all know, we are again cramped for space.
In April 1901, the Board decided to organize a training
school for Nurses, which we operated for many years thereafter.
It opened a month later with Mrs. C.H. Harris as President
and Mrs. E. H. Ward as Superintendent. One member of the
first graduating class, Miss Jennie Rebecca Burrill, still
is active in her profession. She confines her work largely
to private cases at the Jamaica Hospital.
In the same year that the Nurses' Training School was established,
our young Jamaica Hospital went through the saddest experience
of its whole career. The staff was split into factions over
the relative merits of Homeopathy and Allopathy. The schism
has long since ended, but it was very real at that time.
The roots of the dispute went back in 1796, when a German
physician, Dr. Samuel Christian Friedrich Hahnemann, noted
the effects of quinine on the human body, and published a
paper asserting a new medical principle the "law of
similars". The gist of it was that the symptoms of a
disease should be noted, and that a drug which would produce
similar symptoms in the healthy should be used as the treatment.
Hahnemann called his new system "homeopathy". All
doctors who disagreed with him he called "allopaths".
Homeopathy never became very popular in Europe, but it did
become popular in America, and there was a rather deep feeling
of ill-will between homeopaths and the medical profession
generally. The public took sides, too. Even as late as 1910,
I was frequently asked by laymen whether I practiced homeopathy
or allopathy. My invariable answer was that I practiced neither,
that I simply tried to treat my patients to the best of my
ability, with whatever means I considered best.
The medical profession has been largely reunited by the
tremendous growth of specific remedies, such as vaccines,
antitoxins, serums and the like, plus such drugs as salvarsan,
sulfanilimide and hundreds of others too numerous to mention.
However, in 1901, the Jamaica Hospital staff consisted of
three homeopaths and eight so called allopaths. The latter
considered it impracticable longer to conduct the affairs
of the Hospital, and particularly of a Training School, with
such a mixed staff. So the three homeopathic members presented
their resignations, which were accepted with the provision
that all privileges of the hospital be left open for them.
But the matter didn't rest there. Members of the Board of
Trustees and townspeople by the hundreds took sides. In the
end the three homeopathic physicians were again placed on
the Staff, and the so-called allopathic staff resigned. This,
as I said before, was the saddest experience of our career.
The doctrinal schism robbed Jamaica Hospital of some of its
finest men-Dr. G.K. Meynen, Dr. P. M. Wood, Dr. H.M. Auger
and Dr. A. J. Blanchard, among others. However, Dr. Maynen,
our first President, was to come back to us later.
On September 23, 1902, it was announced that Jamaica was
to have a second hospital. This proved to be the Mary Immaculate
Hospital, with which our Jamaica Hospital has served the
community so well during the succeeding years. The Mary Immaculate
opened in a temporary building on the old Dr. Kissam place
on the north side of Fulton Street between Bergen Street
and Grand Street. The Democrat described the property at
the time as a "twelve room house with all improvements
and it has a barn in the rear."
After the allopath-homeopath upheaval, Jamaica Hospital
was left with a Staff consisting only of Drs. Macfarland,
Noble and Hicks. The vacancies were left to be filled slowly
and carefully, to maintain the highest standards. Dr. J.
L. Casselberry was added, and later Drs. L. Howard Moss and
J.L. Bukley. In 1903 the first Consulting Staff was appointed.
It consisted of the following surgeons:
Dr. William Blackman, Dr. William F. Campbell, Dr. Ernest
A. Gallant, Dr. William Tod Helmuth, Dr. George Clinton Jaffrey,
Dr. John H. Schall (in genito-urinary surgery), and Dr. Richard
W. Westbrook (in orthopedic surgery).
Appointment as Consulting Physicians went to Drs. Charles
B. Bacon, Edward Chapin and Walter P. Winchell.
The Consulting Gynecologists were Drs. Walter Gray Crump
and J. Frederick Haller. Dr. Alton G. Warner was appointed
Consulting Occulist and Aurist, and the Consulting Electro-Therapeutists
were Drs. William Lathrop Love and Anso D. Mabie. James P.
Ruyle, D.D.S., was appointed Consulting Dentist.
In 1907 the first Associate Staff was appointed. It consisted
of Drs. J. A. Payne, Arthur Ginnever, Robert F. Ludwig, G.
H. Reichers, Henry Stoesser, M. M. Kittell, Dr. R. Rogers,
W. H. Freeman, Robert Fount, J. Cannon Gain, Louis F. Licht
and C. H.L. Mosely.
In the same year Jamaica Hospital was left its first legacy,
receiving $500 by the will of Mrs. Elizabeth Denton. Mrs.
Denton's bequest was followed in the next 24 months by other
substantial remembrances. Mrs. John R. Carpenter left us
$300, and Dr. John Ardoneaux, in the will, left us $6,000.
These gifts were received with the deepest feelings of gratitude
and invested in first class mortgages as the nest egg of
an endowment fund.
In 1909, for the first time, the State Board of Charities
put our institution on its list of First Class Hospital.
In 1908 the senior medical body at the hospital ceased to
be known as the Medical Staff, and became the Medical Board,
as at present. Two newcomers, Drs. V. W. Weed and M. W. Herriman,
were added to the Associate Staff. The following year Dr.
W. E. Jenner became Jamaica Hospital's first Pathologist,
and Dr. J. E. Shuttleworth, who was to be prominent among
us until his untimely death in 1930, was appointed to the
Associate Staff.
In these formative years, Jamaica Hospital was keeping increasingly
busy. In 1909, there were 355 paying patients, 398 city cases
and 125 free patients. There were 525 operations and 33 maternity
cases.
Hospital fees were still extremely moderate. A ward bed could
be had for a dollar a day for a medical case, or eight dollars
a week for surgical case.
In December, 1909, Dr. C. Otto Stumpf was elected to membership
on the Medical Board. In December, 1910, Drs. Alfred E. Baker
and William H. Jessup were elected to the Associate Staff.
On November 13, 1911, Drs. George S. Comstock, Norman C.
Goodwin, Frank J. Weigand and the writer were elected to
the Associate Staff. In 1912, Dr. Bulkley resigned from the
Medical Board and moved to California, and Dr. Jessup was
elected to fill the vacancy. At the same time, the Board
of Trustees appointed an attorney, Mr. Stephen H. Voris of
Jamaica.
Late in 1912 we were busy becoming financially prepared
for strenuous years that lay ahead. Miss Ann Nostrand left
us $2,000 by will, and Miss Margaret Thompson left us $2,000
by will, and Miss Margaret Thompson left us $500. And in
November of that year there was a ten-day campaign to secure
for the Jamaica Hospital a $50,000 endowment. An executive
committee of 20 prominent citizens, with Mr. Percy G. James
as chairman and Mr. William A. Warnock as treasurer, supervised
the drive. A promotion expert, Mr. A. F. Hoffsommer, got
out large quantities of advance literature. Then 47 teams
of 10 men each canvassed the entire Fourth Ward for ten days,
in conjunction with 20 similar teams of women under the chairmanship
of Mrs. R. W. Higbie, who in 1902 had led in the organizing
of the Jamaica Hospital League, which for many years gave
us Herculean support. Leaders with Mrs. Higbie on the Hospital
League were Mrs. F. F. McClintock, Mrs. W. J. Ballard; Miss
Eveline Ham, Mrs. W. C. Baker and Mrs. T. R. Chapman.
The November 1912, drive went well over the top. More than
6,000 contributors were lined up. They pledged $59,331.68
to the endowment fund, and another $4,136.95 to meet a current
deficit in the operating fund.
Other events occurring in this period of our history are
important to note. Mrs. James A. Kehlbeck was elected President
of the Board of Trustees for her 11th consecutive term. and
Mrs. Eldora H. Ward, who had been Superintendent of Jamaica
Hospital since 1902, resigned. Miss Fern O. Morgan, R. N.,
filled the vacancy in January, 1913, with Miss Marjorie D.
Clement, R.N., as her assistant.
Occasionally in life we meet with people who are so closely
associated with some activity or institution that the mention
of the one automatically brings to mind the other. Such was
the case in the association of Mrs. Ward and the Jamaica
Hospital. Jamaica, during her administration of the hospital,
was still essentially a village, though politically a part
of the City of New York. It was just beginning the tremendous
growth it was later to attain, but one could still walk the
street and greet a friend and neighbor perhaps 50 percent
of the people encountered. And everybody who knew Jamaica
Hospital knew Jamaica Mrs. Ward. Her efficiency as an administrator
was matched only by her kindness toward all those with whom
she came in contact, whether patient, physician or subordinate.
For fourteen of the most critical years in the history of
Jamaica Hospital her one ambition was the success of the
institution which she headed. Small wonder then that the
Trustees saw her departure with extreme regret.
In a way, Mrs. Ward saw us through another era. We began
this chapter by telling about our acquisition of our first
horse drawn ambulance. But even the horse which drew it was
to sniff the fumes of gasoline in his time. Nowhere did the
automobile catch the public fancy more quickly then right
here in our own part of Long Island. Suppose we look wistfully
backward for a moment to sense the atmosphere of Jamaica
in the first decade and a half of the present century.
January 1st, 1901
January 1st, 1901, was a unique date in history for it marked
not only the beginning of a new year but also of a new century.
All the world looked forward to this new century with hope
and with apprehension. What would this new century bring
us? In what ways would it improve our civilization over the
last century? What suffering in the form of war or pestilence
would it bring to us? These questions were reflected in the
special articles and editorials of the contemporary press.
Jamaica Hospital began the new year and century by announcing
on January 1st that plans were in formation for the holding
in the near future of a Hospital Fair. The Democrat of that
day carries the story as follows:
With the opening of the New Century active preparation will
be made by the King's Daughters of Jamaica for the Biennial
Hospital Fair, to be held in Colonial Hall on Thursday and
Friday, April 11th and 12th. At a recent meeting of the Hospital
Board it was decided that all raffles, gift enterprises or
anything partaking of the nature of a lottery should be excluded
from the Fair. Some unique and interesting features are promised
and will be duly announced in the Democrat.
The fair was held as advertised and proved to be a huge
success netting about $1,100 to the hospital.
Colonial Hall, a large white frame building with a wide
porch fronted by tall Colonial pillars stood on the south
side of Jamaica Avenue between New York Avenue and Puntine
Street (165th street). Set well back from the street with
a wide expanse of well-kept lawn, it was one of Jamaica's
best examples of Colonial architecture. When it was demolished
some year later in the name of progress, its going was mourned
by many an old Jamaican.
The Democrat of April 30th, 1901, tells us that a building
boom has been in progress in Jamaica for some time past.
It states that in the six months since July 1st, 1900, 108
new buildings had been erected at a cost of $500,000, in
addition to 82 alterations costing $75,000.
The same issue contains Jamaica's first recorded reference
to the automobile traffic problem. It says:
Something should be done by the authorities to prevent young
Vanderbilt from running his automobile at such a rapid pace
through the public streets and thoroughfares. Narrow escapes
are reported nearly everyday that he comes out this way.
Last Sunday several runaways were averted only by the alertness
of the drivers.
On April 16th, as if in answer to this plea, we read:
A state law has just been passes which regulates the speed
of automobiles to eight miles an hour in the villages, and
fifteen miles on public highways outside the villages; requires
them to be stopped at request or on signal from the driver
of a restive horse, and remain stationary until passed; obliges
the owner to register at the Secretary of State's office
his name and address, with a brief description of the vehicle,
to pay a fee of $1.00 and to place on the back of the vehicle
his name in letters at least three inches long.
That, of course, was the parent of our present automobile
registration law. A year later, the following item appeared
in the Democrat:
The 100-mile endurance test for automobiles will take place
on Saturday, April 26th. It will be held under the direction
of the Long Island Automobile Club, and the course begins
and ends at Flushing. It is a very winding one, this being
necessary in order to get 100 miles of improved highways.
The entries have closed and the list is long one. It is anticipated
that at least fifty machines will compete. Machines will
be sent away in the order of entry and the allotment of observers
will take place on the morning of the test. The starting
point is the fountain at Flushing and the first place to
be reached is Bayside. The road from Jamaica to Flushing
will be the homestretch of the course. The contest is purely
one of endurance, but the course must be covered within a
time limit. Stations will be established for receiving supplies
and oiling.
On June 13th, 1913, we of the Jamaica Hospital recognized
that the automobile was here to stay. On that day we discarded
our horse/drawn ambulance and replaced it with a shiny new
Cadillac ambulance, the purchase price of which had been
subscribed by a number of public/spirited Jamaica residents.
Our Strong Right Arms
No history of Jamaica Hospital would be complete without
a chapter on the noble people who emerged from time to time
as leaders in its development. This chapter turns back the
years and puts the spotlight on Jamaica Hospital's Hall of
Fame. No effort is made to acknowledge the help of all who
have had a hand in our growth. The community served now by
Jamaica Hospital is a very large one, and our benefactors
are legion. But over the course of fifty years, some people
have played such important roles in Jamaica Hospital's development
that their names are indelibly inscribed in letters of gold
on the scroll of good works.
Our first great benefactress had no direct connection with
Jamaica Hospital at any time. She merely created a movement,
which was to fling itself into good works everywhere, and
which in our community concentrated on establishing the Jamaica
Hospital. I refer, of course, to the King's Daughters. Its
founder was Mrs. Margaret McDonald Bottome, of Brooklyn.
Her husband, Rev. Francis Bottome, D. D., was an Englishman
by birth, who entered the Wesleyan Methodist ministry as
a missionary in Canada. He later moved to Brooklyn, where
he was received into the New York East Conference, and where
he met Miss Margaret McDonald, who was active in church work.
This mutual interest drew them together and led to their
marriage.
She was a woman of beautiful character, and was a prolific
writer on religious topics. To influence the largest possible
number of young people, she conceived the idea of an organization
of your women and children, to be divided into groups or
circles. Each circle was to devote its efforts and collective
talents to some specific object.
The movement spread, and became known as the King's Daughter's,
an interdenominational order unrestricted as to membership
in any church. Once founded, the order branched out rapidly
across the United States and Canada, and even into Great
Britain. Its members cast about for worthwhile projects in
their communities, and then saw these projects through, with
all the energy and imagination at their command. The order
still is active today in America's smaller communities. Monuments
to the King's Daughters' labors crowd the American scene.
Offhand, I can list King's Daughters hospitals at Temple,
Texas;at Brookhaven, Mississippi; at Portsmouth and at Staunton,
Virginia; and at Martinsburg, West Virginia.
From 1893 to 1896 a son of the founder of the order, the
Rev. William McDonald Bottome, was rector of Grace Church,
Jamaica. He took a great interest in extending the work his
mother had begun, but the order had been active in Jamaica
for years previously. It was in 1891, you recall, that the
King's Daughters held their famous Hospital Fair, which led
very soon thereafter to the founding of our first Jamaica
Hospital.
Among the King's Daughters in Jamaica, the dominant figure
over a period of great many years was Miss Mary Gale. Every
public movement has behind it some particular force, usually
an individual, who by his own personality, energy and determination
pushes the project through to completion. In the case of
Jamaica Hospital, this force was Mary Rosina Gale.
To the older residents of Jamaica, Miss Gale needs no introduction.
But every member of the community, new or old, should know
the story of this remarkable woman. Miss Gale was born at
Albion, New York, in Orleans County, on September 22, 1843.
She was one of ten children were young, the family moved
to New York City, where Mr. Gale entered politics. He was
elected to the Assembly, and subsequently served as Clerk
and afterwards as Judge of the old Marine Court. While on
the bench, Judge Gale moved his family to Jamaica, purchasing
a large estate on Fresh Meadow Road. The southern part of
his property overlapped the present site of Jamaica Estates.
As the end of his judicial term, Mr. Gale moved his family
to Virginia, where he purchased a farm. A short while later
he died, leaving a widow and eight living children, but little
money. The family moved back to Jamaica to settle permanently.
Mary became a schoolteacher, and continued to teach until
she was retired on a pension. Most of the time she taught
in East Jamaica, now Hollis. She lived in Jamaica and is
said to have walked daily to and from school, regardless
of weather. She was much loved by both pupils and parents,
and many of her old pupils are among the best known residents
of Jamaica today.
Miss Gale was a lifelong communicant of Grace Church, and
was widely known for her humanitarian efforts. She was a
dynamic apostle of good works.
Despite the pressure of her duties as a good, old fashioned,
conscientious schoolteacher, she always found time for constructive
leadership in the community. She set the pace for her fellow
members of the King's Daughters in establishing Jamaica Hospital
in its original temporary quarters. And when we got our first
permanent building, it was largely a monument to Mary Gale's
energy and vision. She also was the first President of our
Board of Trustees.
Late in life she married a bachelor of about her own age,
Louis P. Weysser. In her eighty-eighth year, in January 1931,
she came to the Jamaica Hospital to die. It was fitting that
she should have spent her last hours in the house of mercy
she had done so much to establish.
There is little in our present building to remind us of
Mary Gale. The present Medical Board contains not a single
survivor of the years when she was most active. It would
be fitting, when the opportunity arises, to name some new
pavilion ward, addition or special room or department in
Mary Gale's memory.
Everybody who has ever had even a 24-hour acquaintance with
Jamaica knows King Park and the King Mansion, which stands
in it, facing Jamaica Avenue. However, not every Jamaican
knows the story of the King family and its relation to American
history on the one hand and to the development of Jamaica
Hospital on the other.
The Kings have been Jamaica's most famous historical family.
They trace back to Rufus King, who was born in 1755 at Scarborough,
Maine, which was then a part of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
He graduated form Harvard in 1777, in the midst of the War
of the Revolution.
He studied law and was admitted to the Bar. In 1783 and
1784 he served in the Massachusetts General Court, or legislature,
and then was elected to Congress, serving from 1784 to 1787.
New York then was the seat of the young United States federal
government, and while in New York as a congressman,, Rufus
King met, wooed and won Miss Mary Alsop. They were married
in 1786 at the Alsop home on William Street in New York City.
Among the wedding guests was James Monroe, later to become
President of the United States. Alsop Street, now 150th,
was named after Mary Alsop.
Rufus King gave up his Massachusetts residence and took
a home on Park Row, Manhattan. He became active in New York
politics, and later was elected as United States Senator
form New York. He probably was the only man ever to serve
as Representative in Congress from one State and as Senator
from another.
In the years that followed, Rufus King became interested
in finance. He moved to Wall Street, where he had his office
in his home. His next-door neighbor was Alexander Hamilton,
and together they promoted and founded many enterprises.
Among other things, they were the founders of the city of
Paterson, New Jersey.
Rufus King bought the famous Manor House in Jamaica in 1806.
The previous history of the Manor is somewhat obscure. Little
is known about it except that two pastors of Grace Church
had used it as a rectory, Rev. Thomas Poyers from 1710 to
1732 and Rev. Thomas Colgan from 1732 to 1755. King greatly
enlarged the original house. He built what is now the main
portion of the house, attaching it to the older portion. There
was a smaller cottage which sat well back from the main building.
This had been occupied by the slaves who lived on the property.
King moved up this smaller structure and attached it to the
east end of the Manor House, where it forms the east end of
the mansion to this day. About the same time, Kng imported
from England many small oaks and other trees, which he planted
on his estate. Many of these trees are still standing.
The First Citizen of early Jamaica was United States Minister
to Great Britain from 1796 to 1803, and again from 1825 to
1826. He was Federalist candidate for Vice President of the
United States in 1804 and again in 1808.
In 1816, Rufus King was Federalist candidate for President
of the United States. With the switching of a few thousand
votes here and there, our Mr. King and not James Monroe would
have become the Fifth Chief Executive of the Republic. However,
our townsman was defeated by a staunch friend, a man who
had attended his wedding.
The most distinguished Jamaican of the day lived another
ten and a half years, dying in Jamaica on April 29, 1827,
at the age of 72. He is buried in Grace Churchyard.
John Alsop King, the second son of Rufus, was educated at
Harrow School, England, and in France. He served in the United
States Army as a lieutenant of cavalry in the war of 1812.
He married Mary Ray, after whom Ray Street (now 153rd) was
named. He is chiefly famous as the first Republican Governor
of New York. He was stircken with a heart attack while speaking
at a Fourth of July celebration in Jamaica in 1867. He was
treated by Dr. William D. Wood, who was to continue active
in practice right down to our own time. But in spite of Dr.
Wood's best efforts, Governor King died four days later.
He was buried beside his distinguished father in Grace Churchyard.
Governor John Alsop King's brother, Charles King, was President
of Columbia College (now Columbia University) from 1849 to
1864.
Miss Cornelia King was truly a woman of marvelous character.
She spent much of her life relieving want and suffering among
those who were less fortunate than she. Late in November,
1896, when she was nearly 72 years old, Miss King went to
Manhattan to spend Thanksgiving with her sister-in-law, Mrs.
James A. King. There she fell down stairs and suffered injuries
from which she died a few weeks later. However, it is said
that on her deathbed, Miss King sent for one of her servants
and ordered twelve Thanksgiving dinners prepared and sent
to that number of poor families in Jamaica.
When the first permanent Jamaica Hospital was formally opened
in June 1898, the rector of Grace Church, the Rev. H. O.
Ladd, delivered a eulogy, which is an integral part of our
Institution's history. I quote it in full:
The closed shutters and darkened rooms in yonder Park which
is now happily part of the public domain of the Greater New
York are mute witnesses both of the ancestral honor and finished
life of Miss Cornelia King.
Her memorial is fittingly prominent here among the other
equipment's of the Jamaica Hospital. In the complete and
costly appointments of the operating room a beloved niece
and generous patroness of this beautiful charity has chosen
to continue the eminently useful and benevolent work of this
lovely Christian woman, whom Jamaica will ever most tenderly
and honorable associate with the names of her ancestors.
Here where Miss King was born and where her childhood was
happily passed under the venerable shade of trees of her
grandsire's and father's planting, she early inbreathed the
spirit of piety and benevolence, the benign influence of
which she also richly inherited.
Here she was taught patriotism as she looked on a signature
of the Constitution of the United States by a hand the dust
of which is still precious in Grace Churchyard. Here she
read annals of the was of the Revolution and dwelt on incidents
of foreign courts concerned with our earliest national history
that were described and recorded by the same hand of her
ancestor. Here she listened to the affairs of this State
and Nation, as they were discussed by her father's associates
and counselors in the administration of this commonwealth
of New York. Here she drank in the spirit of a strong and
vigorous churchmanship and an ever ready sympathy for the
needy and distressed, from the conversations and teachings
of their rectors and the faithfully sustained devotions of
her church.
Here she learned the true meaning of Christian brotherhood,
and her desires went forth to the unevangelized of foreign
lands, and struggles of Christian heroes in missions of our
home land.
Her vigorous mind was replete with experience and crowned
with mature judgment as the years of her maiden life were
increased. She became leader as well as a counsellor in Christian
charities, in which she had long and faithfully and humbly
served as a quiet worker. She had learned to seek out and
devise relief for those who were overlooked by others. Obscure
poverty, even in homes of those who were born and bred to
better things, did not escape her kindly notice and had constant
relief from her gentle hand.
So skill and love wrought in and through her ministrations;
and enriched almost unconsciously her own life with kind
deeds and with blessings that her virtues called down from
Heaven by prayers of grateful ones.
Her social hospitality was founded on a deeply wrought and
hidden charity, and to friends and strangers alike she extended
a gracious welcome.
Fitting indeed, then, is this association of her name with
large-hearted women of Jamaica, who have joined in establishing
this hospice for the unfortunate and suffering, overtaken
with the rude strokes of forces which have been evoked and
utilized by science for the convenience and comfort and luxury
of our nineteenth century culture.
Here in the name of Christian love, she bids the surgeon
deftly to wield his tools, guided by an accurate knowledge
of the structure and diseases of these human bodies.
Here she hands to his assistant the anesthetic that for while
shall make the patient oblivious of pain. Here she provides
the antiseptic that forbids festering wounds their former
place in the effects of surgery, and tells the physician to
send forth the unconscious one to the care of the skilled
nursing and confused comfort of cleanliness in bed and room,
with manifold chances of recovery and of strength to rise
above misfortune and still share the good of life.
What if this power is now bestowed on Miss Cornelia King
by one most loving, and loyal to her kinswoman by whom she
herself had been taught the ways of sweet charity? It is
on her part but returning the privilege she had shared with
that life now remitted to its golden and glorified silence.
For being dead, she yet speaks and works with malice toward
none, with charity toward all.
Here where her dear name has thus been written by another,
in the very borderland to which so many stricken ones shall
come under the swift but kindly strokes of the surgeon's
hand--
Say not of thy friend departed
She is dead; she had but grown
Larger souled and deeper hearted
Blossoming into skies unknown;
All the air of earth is sweeter
For the being's full release
And thine own life is completer
For her conquest and her peace.
One other member of this famous King family must be mentioned
in this narrative - Miss Euphemia Van Rensselaer. She was
a great granddaughter of Rufus King.
I found the following item from the Long Island Press in
Chester Durgin's: "Reflections of Yesterday."
First Trained Nurse
Lived in Jamaica
Euphemia Van Rensselaer, great granddaughter of Rufus King,
was said to be the first trained nurse in the United States.
She founded the Bellevue Training School for Nurses in Manhattan,
which is still in existence.
The uniform adopted by Miss Van Rensselaer when a nurse
during the Civil War, much to the disapproval of all her
relatives and friends, is the same style worn by the nurses
today at Bellevue.
Miss Van Rensselaer was the first women nurse to attend
operations regularly. She persuaded her young woman friends
to join her and help nurse the sick soldiers and also to
help clean up the houses used as hospitals.
This information was so interesting that I decided to follow
the matter further. Through the kind help of a Bellevue Training
School graduate, Miss Anne Johnson, Superintendent of Nurses
at Kings County Hospital, I was able to get some clarifying
data direct from Bellevue. It contradicts the version quoted
in "Reflections of Yesterday," but introduces some
other interesting details. Here it is:
Although Miss Van Rensselaer became an Assistant to Sister
Helen, the Lady Superintendent of Bellevue Training School
for Nurses, she was never actually a student member of the
school, nor was she ever graduated as a nurse.
While an Assistant at Bellevue, she designed the uniform
- one of "suitable wash material." The uniform
worn today is made of the same material and changed in style
of blouse and skirt and length, but is fundamentally the
same type of uniform.
The cap also was designed by her in 1876.
When Sister Helen left Bellevue in1876, the Board wished
Miss Van Rensselaer to stay as Lady Superintendent. She refused,
however, as she planned to join the Roman Catholic Church
and the Sisters of Charity.
She and her brother, Henry Van Rensselaer, who was then
studying in Europe, were baptized in Paris. She later became
Sister Mary Dolores of the Sisters of Charity and he, Father
Henry Van Rensselaer, a Jesuit. He died at St. Vincent's
Hospital in New York. She was there with him at the time
of his death.
Thus it is clear that Miss Van Rensselaer was not, as the
Long Island Press item indicated, the first trained nurse
in America. However, this great granddaughter of Rufus King
will always remain an outstanding figure in the history of
nursing.
Miss Mary Rhinelander King, who equipped the operating room
in memory of Miss Cornelia King, and Miss Ellen King, both
of Great Neck, are other members of the King family who were
among Jamaica Hospital's staunchest supporters.
The community of Hollis figures in our history because its
developer, Mr. Frederick W. Dunton, supported Jamaica Hospital
loyally and powerfully over a long period of years.
Mrs. Dunton was born at Hollis, Connecticut, and came to
Jamaica as a young man. He soon became dynamic figure in
the community. He acquired real estate in East Jamaica, and
persuaded many home seekers from New York and elsewhere to
settle there. In 1885 he persuaded the Long Island Railroad
to build a new station to serve his development, and to name
it Hollis. This was an unpopular decision at the time, as
is shown by contemporary comment in the press. The Long Island
Democrat said:
It seems strange that our people go so far for outlandish
names when good ones can be found at home. Hollis seems to
be the name given to the new railroad station at East Jamaica,
it being within a few yards of Carpenter's Inn, Where General
Nathaniel Woodhull was taken prisoner in the Revolution,
and so barbarously wounded that he died soon after. Had the
projectors given it the name of Woodhull, it would have commemorated
the death of a worthy man who lost his like securing the
liberty we now enjoy. Who can deny that republics are ungrateful?
However, Hollis the community became, and Hollis it remains
this day.
In the southwestern part of Jamaica, Mr. Dunton developed
another section, which was called Dunton. Unlike Hollis,
Dunton never became a closely-knit community. The neighborhood
name never really caught on.
Mr. Dunton became well known throughout the country as a
pioneer of the automobile industry. He was president of the
Barrows Company, makers of those quaint electric carriages,
which were a familiar sight a generation ago. In the decade
preceding the opening of our present buildings, Mr. Dunton
was to be a tower of strength in our efforts to serve a very
rapidly expanding community.
One More the Crippled Walk
When I started writing this history, the United States had
been in just two wars during Jamaica Hospital's existence.
Now, of course, we are in a third struggle, by far the
greatest of all. We don't yet know, fully, what new responsibilities,
inconveniences and even hardships this war will bring this
war will bring to us. However, we accept the challenge,
sight unseen, and we are already laying plans to continue
our service to the community with lessened personnel and
equipment.
A defense committee of the Medical Board is actively at
work laying plans for full cooperation with the national
defense agencies. It may be that our function will be purely
routine; that we shall be called upon to do nothing more
than to continue giving conscientious and expertly supervised
care to all who come to our door, seeking to be made well.
In war or peace, that is our primary duty. In the filed of
public health, we have other duties, which have double importance
in the realm of civilian morale in wartime. In this field,
we are equipped to carry even more than our share of the
burden. Two months before America entered the Second World
War, we had opened a new department - a mental hygiene clinic.
It is the first to be established in any voluntary hospital
in Queens. It meets once a week under the supervision of
a trained psychiatrist. Also in attendance are a psychologist,
a corps of trained nurses, and social service workers. It
can be expanded if necessary to cope with the nervous ailments,
which accompany war. It this and other respects, we are geared
to harness our collective knowledge, our facilities and our
fifty years of experience, and dedicate them to civilian
defense.
The years of the first World War and of the postwar readjustment
were very difficult ones for Jamaica Hospital. Our facilities
were constantly overtaxed and our treasury was chronically
deflated. It was obvious that we had three jobs on our hands
- to meet, somehow, the obligation of caring for every sick
person brought to our door; to pay our bills; and to begin
thinking about getting a new building for the larger duties
ahead.
The first of these jobs belonged primarily to the doctors,
the nurses and the administrative staff. The other jobs belonged
to the Trustees and to the citizens of Jamaica and the other
communities, which sent us patients. I think the record shows
that the doctors and all the hospital personnel took care
of their part of the task. And the citizens, to their everlasting
credit, met the challenge nobly. It is my belief that virtually
all people are basically fair, and that most of us are fundamentally
generous. Once we are told the entire truth about "why" our
help is needed, we do all we can and more.
Early in 1916, Jamaica Hospital was living from hand to
mouth. It was caring for the largest number of patients in
its history. But because the purpose of our existence is
service, and not income, we were caring for patients at far
less than cost, and operating constantly at a deficit. So
one of our most influential friends set out to reinforce
our position. On April 10, 1916, the following item appeared
in the Long Island Farmer:
HOSPITAL NEEDS FUND
F. W. Dunton Makes Strong Appeal for Jamaica Hospital Medical
Center
Institution - Has Himself Secured Many
Large Pledges - Situation Explained
The Expenses Must Be Met
Frederick W. Dunton of Hollis, who was one of the foremost
supporters of the project for raising funds for the Jamaica
Hospital three years ago, is now heading another movement
of the same kind and has himself secured already a large
number of pledges. Mr. Dunton, whose personal generosity
in such matters is well known, is untiring in his efforts
for his good cause and deserves the most cordial support
from Jamaica people and residents of the whole territory
served by the Hospital.
In a general letter to those interested he says:
"
In sums ranging from $50 to $100 I have secured the pledges
of $850 annually towards $2,500 to be paid annually in quarters
installments to the trustees of the Jamaica Hospital.
These pledges not to become effective unless the whole $2,500
is secured.
"The hospital runs behind $2,500 annually. Without
an explanation this statement will surprise you. Your will
think of the campaign, which resulted in donations up to
nearly $50,000, and exclaim: 'What! Are they after more money?'
But when you take into consideration the fact that not one
penny of the $43,000 of the endowment fund raised in that
campaign can be used for current expenses, that the interest
only, namely $2,100, can be so used, and when you examine
the hospital statement you will see how the deficiency occurs.
"We all contributed royally to this campaign fund.
It cost me $600. Some have told me that their contribution
was all that ever should be expected from them. If my $600
contribution and the other contributions operated to put
an end to the demands upon the hospital. I should not feel
like subscribing a further $100 annually as I have agreed
to. What a splendid thing it would be if with one contribution
we could put an end to poverty and suffering! We cannot -
and to continue hospital aid to those in our midst requiring
it seems impossible except through the channel therein indicated.
Do you know of any other way?
The Campaign subscription cards show that:
100 people contributed $20 each
214 people contributed $25 each
2 people contributed $35.00 each
90 people contributed $50.00 each
62 people contributed $100.00 each
1 person contributed $200.00 each
5 people contributed $250.00 each
1 person contributed $300.00 each
10 people contributed $500.00 each
3 people contributed $1,000 each
1 person contributed $1,500 each
"Six persons gave $1,500 towards the auto-ambulance,
my contribution being $500, which is mentioned solely for
the purpose of showing that I am entitled to your consideration
in this matter.
Here we have a total number of 489 persons each contributing
$20 or more would give $5 or more annually, the sum required
would be made with slight burden upon any one subscriber.
Will you contribute anything? Is so, please insert the amount
tin the form enclosed and mail same to me."
Yours respectfully,
"F. W. Dunton"
The article in the Long Island Farmer then went on to explain
what the problem was, in dollars and cents. It said:
The statement of the expenses of the hospital enclosed with
Mr. Dunton's letter show that the total receipts for the year
ending September 20, 1915, were $27,234.37. Total expenditures
were $26,333.60. Bills unpaid amounted to $3,399.36, and cash
on hand to $900.77. City bills unpaid amounted to $1,482.09.
Having to wait for these city moneys and with those collected
still leaving a $1,000 deficiency not only prevents discounting
bill and other economic business methods but all the time
brings the trustees face to face with questions concerning
hospital admittances, which should not arise where the wish
is to welcome and care for sufferers regardless of their financial
ability.
To the above article from the Long Island Farmer we can
make just one addition. Namely: P.S. Our friends and neighbors
again came through.
In the summer of 1916, the infantile paralysis epidemic descended
upon us. The terrible scourge made its first Greater New York
appearance in Brooklyn, where few cases were reported in June.
Daily thereafter the number of new cases reported in June.
Daily there after the number of new cases increased rapidly,
and by mid July the epidemic was spreading like wildfire.
On Saturday, July 1st, the Long Island Farmer printed the
following:
Outbreak of Infantile Paralysis
Alarms New York City
NEW York, July 1. - An outbreak of infantile paralysis is
alarming the city's health department. Forty seven patients
have died in Manhattan and Brooklyn since June 10th, according
to a statement issued by the department. Forty-two of the
deaths were in Brooklyn and the other five in Manhattan.
Of the Brooklyn victims, twenty two have succumbed since
Wednesday.
Since Thursday forty seven cases have been reported, thirty
eight in Brooklyn, eight in Manhattan and one in the Bronx.
The total number of known cases is now 302.
On Monday, July 3rd, the headline in the Farmer was "Infantile
Paralysis Rages." By then there were 379 cases in New
York City and there had been 76 deaths, 58 of them in the
week just preceding.
The article went on to tell about the physicians meeting
in war council to combat the scourge. It said that 100 doctors
from the infected Brooklyn district gathered at the Polhemus
Memorial Clinic, and were addressed by Dr. Simon Flexner
and Health Commissioner Haven Emerson, who enlisted them
in a systematic, concentrated fight. The article explained
that Dr. Emerson told what the Department of Health was doing,
while Dr. Flexner summarized all the latest medical knowledge
of the disease.
From then until the end of September, the epidemic was headline
news continuously. It spread into Queens in the first week
of July. New cases and deaths reached their peak about the
middle of August. Then some cooler weather came, and the
epidemic seemed to spread less rapidly. On August 9th, the
local papers reported that blood from previously infected
persons was being used with apparently good results in treating
victims.
Throughout the epidemic, New York City and most nearby communities
were under quarantine. Children were not allowed to leave.
Neither were they allowed to attend any public entertainment.
Parents were advised to keep them indoors and away from possible
contamination.
In the early summer of 1916, the Queensboro Hospital, now
the Queensboro Pavilion of the Queens General Hospital was
nearing completion. It was built for the treatment of tuberculosis
patients, but with the coming of the infantile paralysis
epidemic it was hastily made ready to accommodate the paralysis
victims and soon was filled to capacity. This circumstance
permanently changed the character of the hospital, which
has been used ever since for treatment of contagious diseases.
The opening of the public schools for the fall session was
delayed until September 26th. On September 27th, the Health
Department declared the epidemic at an end. It had taken
2,248 lives in New York City and had left thousands of other
victims crippled.
Into the task of rehabilitating these victims, Jamaica Hospital
flung itself vigorously. By September 12th, we had inaugurated
an orthopedic clinic under the direction of Dr. Henry C.
Courten. This clinic proceeded to write on of the proudest
chapters of our history.
Meanwhile a group of good citizens got together under the
chairmanship of Mrs. Webster Williams and formed the Orthopedic
Social Service Committee to help us broaden our service and
treat large numbers of the children at their homes. This
committee worked very closely with Dr. Courten and the orthopedic
clinic.
On January 15, 1917, the Long Island Farmer told about our
work as follows:
Infantile Paralysis Clinics
What They Are Doing to Restore Complete Health
To Last Summer's Victims of Poliomyelitis-
Jamaica Hospital Treated 21 Thursday
Were Taken There By Auto
The saving of the little folks who survived infantile paralysis
last summer from being crippled for life is what is sought
to be done now through the free clinics being held twice
a week at Jamaica Hospital and Flushing Hospital through
cooperation with the city, which superintends the collection
of the young folks in automobiles and brings them to the
hospitals for treatment. At the Jamaica Hospital last Thursday,
21 young folks who were left more or less helpless by paralysis
attacks were treated, being brought there by automobile in
care of a nurse, former playground supervisor, who was engaged
for this purpose. The automobile, provided through private
generosity, is used two days a week in Flushing and two days
a week in Jamaica.
The massage and other treatment given has accomplished most
gratifying results, and often in even two or three weeks
time surprising improvement is noted. It is hoped in this
way to gradually restore to most of the afflicted children
the use of their limbs and prevent the results of last summer's
epidemic from being so serious in after-effects as it otherwise
would have been.
The parents of children who have been afflicted in this
way can help by cooperating with the authorities. In general,
of course, they are only too ready to do so, but among some
people, especially foreigners, there is a dread of hospitals
and a fear of what the doctors may do to the children. They
should understand that the treatment at the clinics is very
essential to the future health and activity of their children,
and that they should exert every effort to secure it for
them
Naturally, all this took money. It was decided to raise
a fund, which would be used for the orthopedic clinic, and
for that purpose alone. To this end many entertainment and
parties were arranged. One of the largest and most successful
was held in Jamaica on Friday, February 9th, 1917. We find
an item about it in the Farmer of the following day:
Concert for Hospital Benefit
One of the finest musical programs in Jamaica in some time
was that of last evening at the concert at Memorial House
in aid of the Jamaica Hospital's Orthopedic Clinic for the
children suffering from after effects of infantile paralysis.
The concert was well attended and successful in every way.
At the close of the musical program and while the young
lady ushers were selling candy, Mrs. Caroline Burtis made
an address and introduced the superintendent of the hospital,
Miss Saffeir, who told of the work of the clinic and what
a benefit is being conferred on so many young people through
it, and invited people to come and see for themselves. Something
like $500 will probably be realized, and this will aid in
a work which benefits families of all classes, for the plague
of the summer was no respecter of persons, and will not be
if it comes again next summer.
By the hundreds the children came to the clinics. With the
passing of weeks and months, their limbs grew stronger. Traces
of the great epidemic, while never wholly obliterated, were
minimized. And those who had created the Jamaica Hospital
and supported it down through the years could ask for no
better monument to their generosity then the record of Jamaica's
children restored to active health. Fittingly enough, when
ground was broken a few years later for our present building,
it was youthful victims of infantile paralysis, restored
to vigor at the orthopedic clinics, who wielded shovels and
turned the first earth.
To Our War Dead
In 1917 and 1918, two of the Four Horsemen were abroad in
our land - War and Pestilence. The United States entered
the World War (number one) on April 6, 1917. In 1918, a pandemic
of influenza ravaged the world. Both events left their mark
on Jamaica.
Our present hospital building was erected largely as a memorial
to the boys of Central Queens who gave their lives on the
soil of France.
The boys who survived that world struggle and returned with
the laurels of victory found their home community greatly
changed in their absence.
On January 1st, 1918, the clean government forces of our
city won a major victory. After a long battle against politicians
and patronage pressure groups, the office of Coroner was
abolished. In its place, the office of Medical Examiner was
created. This put qualified physicians, and not politicians,
in charge of investigating accidental and homicidal deaths.
The reform provided for a Chief Medical Examiner with central
offices and laboratories in Manhattan, and for deputy and
assistant medical examiners covering their various sections
of the city.
An examination was scheduled to choose an assistant medical
examiner for Queens. Many of the younger physicians of the
borough contested for the appointment. A future, President
of our Jamaica Hospital Medical Board, Dr. Howard W. Neail,
won the post and has held it ever since. He has built up
an enviable reputation as a medico-legal expert, and has
testified in many famous trials, In recognition of his standing
as a medical examiner; Dr. Neail has twice been elected to
head the National Society of Medical Jurisprudence, a group
of physicians, lawyers, and others particularly interested
in forensic medicine.
Another and more sweeping change was wrought in our community
early in 1918 when workmen riveted the last steel girders
of the B.M.T. elevated line along Jamaica Avenue. For the
first time, Jamaica had five-cent rapid transportation into
Manhattan.
Almost instantly, a vast new population moved to Jamaica.
By late spring, there was an acute housing shortage. A stupendous
building boom was under way, but it took time to catch up
with the demand. One of the victims of the housing shortage
was this writer. I was discharged from the army in June 1918,
but it was late fall before I could get a suitable location
to re-established practice.
From this time on, the old Jamaica of leisurely tempo was
finally and definitely a thing of the past. By the end of
1918 we were spiritually as well as physically and politically
a part of the great cosmopolitan city.
Of course, many of Jamaica's newcomers and many of Jamaica's
residents of longer standing failed to survive the 1918 winter.
With awful impartiality, the dread plague - influenza - stole
into our homes, our shops and our schools. Young and old,
weak and strong were stricken. Nearly every house was a house
of sickness, and all too many were houses of death.
The staffs and personnel of the Jamaica, Mary Immaculate
and Queensboro Hospitals worked virtually around the clock,
for weeks. Then, one bright day, we discovered that the tide
had turned. The peak had been passed. The plague was under
control. But the cost had been terrific. In the United States
alone, 548,452 persons were dead. It has been estimated that
the influenza death toll throughout the world was more than
20,000,000.
The first step toward building our present hospital was
taken on April 4th, 1917, two days before the United States'
declaration of war on Germany. A group of men met at Kew
Gardens and laid the plans. The building that finally was
erected was much larger and more costly than the one they
envisaged, because of the unexpected great growth of the
community. But the main objective was fixed on the horizon
that night in 1917.
An article in the Long Island Farmer the next day disclosed
how resolutely the plans ere made. Here is the item:
Meeting Last Night Appointed Committees
To Raise $200,000
There may be a new hospital to cost $200,000 on he ridge
between Jamaica and Forest Hills. A meeting was held last
night at Kew Gardens, and 70 men formed themselves into a
committee and discussed plans for the institution. The hospital
will be incorporated, and a whirlwind campaign will be conducted
to raise funds. It was stated that $5,000 had been pledged.
The sum will be used in defraying the expenses of the campaign
for money.
It is admitted that the new institution will take the place
of the old Jamaica Hospital, even to the turning over of the
$50,000 endowment fund, which was raised several years ago.
A campaign committee was organized last night; Chairman, Samuel
W. Eckman, Forest Hills, Vice-Chairman, Frederick W. Dunton,
Hollis; Treasurer, Robert W. Higbie, Jamaica, Secretary, D.
Nelson Raynor, Jamaica.
An executive committee was formed, composed of one man from
each of the communities the hospital is expected to serve:
J. L. White, South Ozone Park; Percy G. James, Jamaica; John
A. Loope, Hollis; Edward E. Buhler, Queens; E. N. Mungen,
Springfield; M.F. Teepe, St. Albans; W. C. Reid, Rosedale;
I .W. Backus, Middle Village; chas. H. Schroeder, Woodhaven;
Peter Albrecht, Ozone Park; Frederick W. Boschen, Richmond
Hill; Alrick H. Man, Kew Gardens; E. M. Mays, Forest Hills;
J. A. Rapelye, Elmhurst; Harry I. Huber, Morris Park, Eugene
Pauly, Glen Morris.
After this initial meeting, interest in the new institution
increased slowly but steadily. The Trustees, through their
committees, laid the groundwork for the projected drive for
necessary funds.
By 1919 they were ready, and on February 24th they took
the first definite steps. In June of that year, an intensive
drive for funds was conducted jointly with Mary Immaculate
Hospital. After the drive was over, the Trustees bought the
land on which our present building stands. The purchase price
was $18,000.
In February, 1920, a radical change was made in the composition
of the Board of Trustees. Up to that time, for more than
twenty-seven years, the Board had been composed entirely
of women. But in undertaking the erection of a new home for
Jamaica Hospital, the ladies felt they needed the active
help of men. So the Board of Trustees was enlarged by the
election of fifteen men, in addition to fifteen women. Mr.
William C. Reid was elected President of the reorganized
Board, succeeding Mrs. R. W. Higbie, who had served since
1914. Since that time the Board always has been headed by
a man. There also has been a gradual substitution of men
for women, until the Board today is made up of twenty-six
men and four women.
The women have continued active in support of Jamaica Hospital,
principally through the Auxiliaries and other cooperating
organizations. A list of all these organizations and their
officers as of 1941 will be found in the appendix to this
history.
On September 7th, 1920, a Building Committee was appointed
by the Board of Trustees, with Mr. Percy G. James, founder
of the 4th Ward Men's Hospital Association, as chairman.
The committee was empowered to erect a building at a cost
of $500,000, exclusive of furnishings and equipment.
On May 19th, 1922, the contract for the excavation and the
foundation was let to Jacobs and Young for $26,500, and Monday,
Mary 29th, was selected for the ground-breaking ceremonies.
On May 27th, the following article appeared in the Long Island
Press:
Kiddies Will Break Ground for Hospital
All Crippled Children in Jamaica Asked to Be Present
Then Free Trip to Big Circus
Automobile Dealers' Association Offers Fleet of Cars
To Give Youngsters Treat of Their Young Lives
Time Is Monday, May 29th, 12:30 Noon
Crippled children in Jamaica will have one glorious time
on Monday. They're going to have an automobile ride, take
part in the ceremony of breaking ground for the hospital
that will help injured and sick kiddies to get well. And
then-
What do you suppose?
They're going to the circus!
Honest, they are.
The hospital management has all arrangements made. The cripples
will be called for at their homes. Members of the Jamaica
Automobile Dealers Association will supply their best cars,
with swell drivers. There will be plenty of cars. No crowding.
They'll be on hand at 12:30 noon when two of their number,
with real shovels, will pull up some earth, the very beginning
of the big $500,000 hospital. It will be on Van Wyck, Ridgewood
and Lester Aves. The Ottilie Asylum Band will play, some
men will talk, and it will be all over except:
The big fun comes next, for all the cripples will be loaded
into the automobiles again and the traffic cops will give
the cars the right of way all the way to the circus. Whoopee!
Boss Butler, of the circus publicity department, promises
the cripples shall see the best circus of their lives and
they'll have an afternoon to remember all the rest of their
days.
The Event was duly recorded, in a more serious vein, in
the Long Island Press of May 30th, 1922, as follows:
Break Ground for Jamaica's New Hospital
Two Children, Aided By Treatment,
Lift First Shovelfuls
Beginning of $500,000 Building
With thankfulness in their hearts for medical attention
they had received which had returned to them the use of their
limbs, two Jamaica children who were cured of the effects
of infantile paralysis at the orthopedic clinic attached
to the Jamaica Hospital, at noon yesterday turned over the
first two spadefuls of earth on the site of the new hospital.
The building will stand on Van Wyck Avenue, just south of
Jamaica Avenue. The ceremony was performed in the presence
of several hundreds of people, all bound by close ties to
the Jamaica Hospital.
It was with enthusiasm that this throng looked upon the
simple but impressive ceremonies hold under the spreading
branches of the tall maple trees that line the site of the
new half-million-dollar edifice. It will take shape in the
ensuing few months, and will rise as a monument to those
how have worked faithfully to make it a reality. It will
be an added incentive to those who will carry on the work
that must be done to raise the funds still needed to complete
the building.
Old Sol worked in harmony with the committee of arrangements
for this important event, and beamed his kindliest rays upon
the gathered multitude. The greensward was as a velvet carpet,
while the gentle old maple trees waved their branches as
if to fan and cool the children still undergoing treatment,
to have their deformed limbs brought back to natural shape
and condition, so that once more they may romp and play with
other children not so afflicted.
At the close of the ceremonies, the site of the hospital
took on the appearance of a picnic ground. Children, parents
and hospital workers, with here and there a nurse in her
chic blue and white uniform, sat on the grass under the trees.
Those who brought luncheons shared them with their neighbors;
others enjoyed the luncheon provided for the children by
the Jamaica Herald.
As the children and grown folks dined, the giant steam shovel
arrive in tow of two large motor trucks, which pulled it
to position in the middle of the field. There, with little
delay, it scooped in to the cavernous interior of its giant
bucket the first load of earth. Then as the grounds cleared
and the children and older folks went away, the steam shovel
took scoopful after scoopful of earth, making way for the
foundation walls upon which will be reared a noble structure
where maimed and broken bodies will be mended, where the
ill will be made well, and where many a leading citizen of
future generations in Jamaica will first see the light of
day.
The formal program at the ground breaking was simple, but
there was an air of impressiveness about it that made it
a fitting one for the occasion. The ceremony opened with
invocation by the Rev. Andrew Magill, pastor of the First
Presbyterian Church of Jamaica, who represented all the Protestant
denominations.
William Boardman, chairman of the ceremony committee, delivered
the opening address. He confined his remarks mostly to the
financial problem, which has been faced and partly solved
by the building committee and its various workers.
A good beginning has been made upon this important task,
Mr. Boardman pointed out, but a still greater task is still
to be accomplished before the building which is now being
started will be fully financed.
The building will cost $500,000. There have been two drives
in which the hospital participated. The first was for an
endowment fund, which is still untouched, and the second
a joint drive for the Jamaica Hospital and Mary Immaculate
Hospital. The money received in this drive also is still
unused and will be applied, like the former, to the cost
of the building and site. There are, in addition, some funds
donated by Mary Smith of Kew Gardens for an orthopedic ward.
In addition to all these funds, which total about $150,000,
there is still $350,000 to be raised.
William C. Reid, president of the Board of Trustees of Jamaica
Hospital, delivered a very illuminating address in which
he outlined the work the hospital has done since its inception
a quarter of a century ago. He spoke of the progress made
in that time, and of the hopes and aspirations of those who
have been altruistically doing their utmost to assist the
hospital to give the greatest possible service, and to expand
its facilities in every way possible so it could ever extend
to a constantly increasing extent the helping hand, which
only a properly conducted and maintained the work which not
alone the Jamaica Hospital but the Mary Immaculate Hospital
as well is doing, in this respect. The building for which
ground is being broke, he pointed out, will be the realization
of a long series of years of consistent and persistent effort.
It represents a highly developed spirit of unselfish cooperation,
on the part of those to whom it will be a useful monument,
which will carry on for years to come the work which they
started, have aided, or have done their best to assist in
any way.
As Mr. Reid closed his address, the two children who have
been treated and practically cured of the effects of infantile
paralysis took the spade, and each in turn raised a spadeful
of earth from a square, which had been cleared of sod. The
children were Charles Weidman, formerly of Jamaica, but now
of 1381 Broadway, Brooklyn, and Emma Dorman, 12 years old,
of Elmont, L.I.
The closing prayer was made by the Rev. Mr. Irving F. Reichert,
pastor of Temple Israel, of Jamaica.
The Rev. Father John M. Scheffe, rector of St. Mary's Church,
who was present as representing the Catholic Church, did
not deliver an address.
The Jamaica Automobile Dealers' Association donated the
use of a number of automobiles to convey 200 children and
their parents to the site. Bordens furnished milk for the
luncheon.
At appropriate intervals in the program the Sousa Band of
the Ottilie Asylum delivered a very fine program music.
Thus, in the simple tradition, we began building the fine
new Jamaica Hospital, which still is our home. During the
summer of 1922 the excavation was completed, and the structure
steadily rose. On the tenth of December, the cornerstone
was laid. It was a cold, blustery Sunday afternoon, but five
hundred spectators turned out.
Those of us who knew the history of Jamaica Hospital's beginnings
had a feeling of exhilaration when a gracious elderly lady
rose from her seat on the platform and handled the first
trowelful of mortar. She was Mrs. Louis R. Weyser, formerly
Miss Mary Gale, the public-spirited schoolteacher who had
led the King's Daughters in founding Jamaica Hospital thirty-one
years earlier, and who had laid the cornerstone of the first
permanent structure on the eve of the turn of the century.
The Rev. Percy Shoemaker, pastor of the First Methodist
Episcopal Church of Jamaica, delivered the opening prayer.
Mr. William C. Reid, President of the Board of Trustees,
spoke. So did Dr. Archibald C. MacLachlan, principal of the
Jamaica Training School for Teachers, and the Rev. Andrew
Magill of the Presbyterian Church. The Reverend Arthur M.
Ellis, pastor of the Union congregational Church of Richmond
Hill, brought congratulations from the people of that community,
within the borders of which our new building is located.
Before the cornerstone was sealed, a metal box was fitted
into it. This box contained a history of the Hospital, prepared
by Charles M. Hoffman, our Executive Secretary. Also historical
sketches of each Auxiliary, miscellaneous records and documents
relating to the Hospital, and copies of the local newspapers.
At the time this ceremony took place, the Trustees had on
hand about $275, 000. Another $225,000 was urgently needed.
This represented only a little over a dollar a piece from
each person in our territory. Yet the men in charge of the
drive found the money very hard to get.
For a time, they were at their wits' end. They cannot, therefore,
be greatly censured for having considered and almost carried
out a plan that would have done injustice to the founders.
This plan was to change the name of the hospital in the hope
of facilitating a wider appeal for funds.
In the October, 1923, issue of Queensboro, a monthly publication
of the Queensborough Chamber of Commerce, the trial balloon
was sent up. The article related that the new hospital building
was under construction, and added:
When the new building is opened, the name will be changed,
as it will be located in Richmond Hill, just over the Jamaica
line. It is thought, therefore, that some other name, indicating
the wider field of service, will be more appropriate. A prize
of $50 was offered by the Committee for the best name submitted.
The contest closed October 8th, but the name proposed by
the successful contestant had not been announced when Queensboro
went to press.
Luckily, nothing ever came of this scheme. Wiser heads prevailed.
We still have and will continue to have the original name
- Jamaica Hospital. It's an honorable title and should not
be lightly discarded.
The fine new building - our present home- was completed
in the summer of 1924. The first patient was admitted on
August 24th. The next day the building was dedicated and
formally opened for service to the community.
I could tell you about the opening, but in this as in any
other history, contemporary accounts are better. Suppose
we read about it, therefore, in the Long Island Press of
August 26th, 1924:
Jamaica Hospital is Formally Opened
Kindly Aid Given
The new Jamaica Hospital building on Van Wyck Blvd was
officially opened last night at 5:30 o'clock. A small group
of about
a dozen officials and head nurses, who have worked diligently
to make the new institution a success, gathered in a circle
in the rotunda near the main entrance while William C.
Reid, president of the Board of Trustees, told of the purpose
of
the building and its staff, and also thanked everyone who
in any way had helped to erect the building.
Rev. Rolla E. Hunt, pastor of the Richmond Hill Baptist
Church, offered a dedicatory prayer, after which Mr. Reid
said:
"
On behalf of the Board of Trustees of the Jamaica Hospital,
I officially declare this hospital open for the use and service
of humanity."
A small boy, Stanley Linsky, 7, was the first patient, to
be put to bed in the hospital, but to Ruth Gibson, of Atlantic
Avenue, Richmond Hill, goes the honor of being the first
patient admitted. Stanley, according to the report last night,
arrived at the old hospital building just as a load of nurses
was leaving for the new building. It is said that he was
suffering from pneumonia, and had been sent there by the
Health Department. He was the first patient transferred and
put to bed, but Miss Gibson was the first to be regularly
admitted.
Ambulances from Flushing Hospital, Mary Immaculate Hospital
and Jamaica Hospital, and that of the F. E. Cornell Company
of Hempstead, helped transfer the 20 patients from the old
building to the new. The Cornell ambulance was used through
the courtesy of J. Walter Whittel.
All patients were moved with ease, and even though the weather
was not favorable, no difficulty was experienced, so well
were all plans for the transfer worked out beforehand.
From nurses and patients nothing but praise for the officials
and the beautiful building could be heard. It was like getting
to know Aladdin and his lamp. One day in an old frame building,
the next in a beautifully appointed fireproof structure equipped
with every convenience and comfort.
According to the same paper, the first patient to be treated
in the clinic of the new hospital was Theodore Goetschel,
a carpenter, of 334 East 93rd Street, Manhattan. A news item
recorded that:
Injury occurred to Goetschel while he was helping unload
lumber at Queens Boulevard and Jamaica Avenue, from a truck
owned by Gude and Company of Manhattan. A large beam of lumber
fell, crushing his left thumb. He was rushed to the new hospital
at once. He was treated by Dr. P. A.. Corn and Miss A. C.
Walters, physician and nurse attending the case, for a cut
and badly bruised thumb. It was necessary to take two sutures
in the injured member. He was able to go home after treatment.
Before long our comparatively large new building was to
become as full and as busy as the old hospital. By the late
1930's we were to wish we had much more space, which we could
well use. Lacking more room, we have dedicated ourselves
to getting sixty useful seconds out of every minute in the
facilities available to us. Our doors have been open uninterruptedly
for twenty-four hours of every day "for the use and
service of humanity," as Mr. Reid pledged at the dedication.
For such is a hospital's mission.
Fifty Years of Progress
On December 30, 1940, Jamaica Hospital drew press notices
from coast to coast. The previous night a nine-year-old boy,
John Guerin, of 89-32 138th Street, fell on a pair of scissors
while playing in his home. A blade of the scissors pierced
his heart. His father picked him up and rushed him to Jamaica
Hospital.
There was little time to spare. The lad was on the operating
table before you could count to fifty. Deftly and skillfully
a surgeon went to work. The boy's chest wall and pericardium
were opened. The incision in the heart was located. It was
nasty gash, and the boy was within precious few minutes of
death. Racing against time, the surgeon closed the wound
with three interrupted sutures.
Happily, death had been cheated. The youngster had a rather
stormy post-operative period, but pulled through. Last October
6th, the Long Island Daily Press printed the sequel to the
surgical drama. Here's the item:
Boy With Sewed Heart
Now Leads Normal Life
John Richard Guerin, the 9 year old Jamaica boy whose heart
was pierced when he accidentally fell on a pair of scissors
nine months ago, is back at school and is playing baseball,
riding his bicycle and romping with his dog, Scrappy.
He lives upstate now because the doctors said that living
out in the country would strengthen his heart.
Francis Leupold, superintendent of Jamaica Hospital, welcomed
the boy last week when he returned for an examination.
That was a spectacular case, because it contained all the
elements of human-interest drama. Yet under the gleaming
white light of the operating room, lives are saved almost
every day. Not infrequently, the race against death is as
closely run as in the case of John Richard Guerin. Always,
the issue is an urgent one. A mother must be kept alive and
restored to vigor so she can go and care for her family.
A father must be saved so he can resume his duties as a breadwinner.
Hospitals deal not with illness and wounds but with human
beings. God-given lives of individual are entrusted to us.
Each one is somebody's mother, somebody's father, somebody's
son or somebody's daughter. Our responsibility is great.
It is a matter of quiet pride with those of us who have
been associated with Jamaica Hospital that we have tempered
our professional impersonal aloofness with sympathetic understanding.
There is room for both. A patient paid us a high tribute
a few years ago.
On leaving, after undergoing a very serious operation, she
said: "I really have enjoyed it here. I shall remember
Jamaica Hospital as the meeting place of scientific objectivity
and of warm human kindness.
Since we first opened our doors in the spring of 1891, many
new weapons have been added to the arsenal of medicine, and
we have made it a point to use all of them, whatever the
cost. We have been determined, during every moment of our
history, to bestow on our patients in Central Queens all
the benefits of medical research as soon as they are tried,
tested and approved.
A few months after Jamaica Hospital was organized, a truly
great medical discovery was announced-Dr. Robert Koch's remedy
for tuberculosis. The announcement came on October 22, 1891.
In November 1895, another great discovery was announced-the
X ray. A German physicist, Wilhelm Konrad Von Roentgen, Professor
of Physics at Wurzburg, discovered a peculiar electric ray,
which could pass through various substances opaque to ordinary
light rays. He noted that this ray also affected photographic
plates. He called it the X or unknown ray because he knew
so little about it. As we all know, this was one of the greatest
discoveries ever to come to the aid of the medical professional.
Indeed, it was to prove valuable to a multitude of professions
and industries entirely apart from medicine. Incidentally,
future Boards of Trustees of Jamaica Hospital, and of thousands
of other institutions, were to suffer many headaches trying
to finance proper equipment made necessary by this discovery.
It is a little startling to reflect that when Jamaica Hospital
opened, there was no accepted remedy for tuberculosis, and
no photographic aid to diagnosis of internal ills. Looking
back, it seems as if the science of medicine was almost in
a primitive state at the beginning of our institution's history.
Yet in four and a half years we had the Koch remedy and the
X-ray. We must set down that period as one of magnificent
progress.
In 1898, Pierre and Marie Curie announced the discovery
of radium. This marvelous substance, together with X-ray,
has since been of inestimable value to the human race, particularly
in the constant struggle to conquer cancer. Oddly enough,
like Von Roentgen and so many others who have contributed
heavily to the arsenal of medicine, Pierre and Marie Curie
were not physicians.
The year 1905 will always be a notable date in medical history.
It was in 1905 that the cause of syphilis was finally established,
after baffling science for generations. Drs. Schaudinn and
Hoffmann announced after extensive research that the spircoheta
pallida was the specific cause of this age-old scourge of
humanity. The following year Dr. August Von Wassermann and
his co-workers announced their complement fixation test for
diagnosing this dread disease. The cause of syphilis and
a specific test for its presence having been discovered,
it was only a matter of time before a cure would be evolved.
This happened when, in 1910, Dr. Paul Ehrlich announced the
perfection of salvarsan. The new medicine was put on the
market in December 1910. Dr. Ehrlich already was well known
because he had been a co-winner of the Nobel prize for medicine
in 1908.
Dr. Ehrlich's original idea that he had a medicament that
would cure syphilis with the application of one dose was
doomed to failure. It didn't do this, and the first salvarsan
was so toxic that in many cases its administration resulted
in death.
However, salvarsan and its derivatives have been much improved
in late years, and now constitute the accepted therapy in
syphilis. Physicians at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York
have recently published the results of experiments in the
slow drop continuous injection method of treatment, which
may approximate in results Dr. Ehrlich's dream of a one-dose
cure. Our own experience with this method of treatment in
a considerable number of cases has been most gratifying.
The cures, if permanent, savor of the miraculous.
In the more recent years of our history as a hospital, there
have been other discoveries of tremendous importance. The
blood transfusion was an attractive notion in medicine's
early annals, but has been perfected only in our own generation.
The so-called sulfa drugs, sulfanilamide and its offshoots,
may become very valuable aids in the struggle against illness
and disease. And hardly a week passes without the perfection
of new medical weapons which would appear very obscure to
the layman but which are of the highest significance to the
skilled physician.
Jamaica Hospital is proud to have lived through such a half
century of progress.
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