I find that it is sometimes very difficult to get an injured man, or one seized with some sudden illness, taken into a city hospital. There are so many rules and so many regulations, so many things necessary to be done, that while the rules are being complied with the soul of the sick or injured man, weary of the waiting, takes its flight. And after the man is dead, the doctors are kind enough to certify that he died of heart failure.
So—in a general way—I speak of all the asylums, of all the homes for orphans. When I see one of those buildings I feel that it is full of petty tyranny, of what might be called pious meanness, devout deviltry, where the object is to break the will of every recipient of public favor.
I may be all wrong. I hope I am. At the same time I fear that I am somewhere near right.
You may take our prisons; the treatment of prisoners is often infamous. The Elmira Reformatory is a worthy successor of the Inquisition, a disgrace, in my judgment, to the State of New York, to the civilization of our day. Every little while something comes to light showing the cruelty, the tyranny, the meanness, of these professional distributers of public charity—of these professed reformers.
I know that they are visited now and then by committees from the Legislature, and I know that the keepers of these places know when the "committee" may be expected.
I know that everything is scoured and swept and burnished for the occasion; and I know that the poor devils that have been abused or whipped or starved, fear to open their mouths, knowing that if they do they may not be believed and that they will be treated afterward as though they were wild beasts.
I think these public institutions ought to be open to inspection at all times. I think the very best men ought to be put in control of them. I think only those doctors who have passed, and recently passed, examinations as to their fitness, as to their intelligence and professional acquirements, ought to be put in charge.
I do not think that hospitals should be places for young doctors to practice sawing off the arms and legs of paupers or hunting in the stomachs of old women for tumors. I think only the skillful, the experienced, should be employed in such places. Neither do I think hospitals should be places where medicine is distributed by students to the poor.
Ignorance is a poor doctor, even for the poor, and if we pretend to be charitable we ought to carry it out.
I would like to see tyranny done away with in prisons, in the reformatories, and in all places under the government or supervision of the State.