A University Hospital

In noticing the exercises oi' the Medical Commenceüient last weck, we promised to give our readers in this issue tba portion of the address of Rev. Mr. Gil lespie, touching the need of a hospita in connection with the University, anc the great work for it to do. 'We herewitl present his remarks and invite a carefu reading, especially by our own citizens: Gentlemen of the medical faculty, owe to you the opportunity to bear my part in thóse exercises. I return niy thank "in the form of comniendation to our towns men of an object which I know enlist your deep interest and even your painfu concern. The establishment of a suitabl hospital is in your view as in that of you students, a necessity of their medical ed ucation. It were presumption in me to venture deeply into that argument, but may speait with the words of your pro fession : "Many are in the habit of view ing hospitals solely as charities, which i a great mistake. Charitable purpose they undoubtedly fulfill to the individua] but they are of equal importance to th community at large. Would that ever poor sick sufferer, being in as much eas as can be given him on his restless bed knew how much he owes of relief - possi bly even oflifo - totheskill andexperienc learued at those forlorn hospital bed where alone all the mysterious laws o diseaso aro carefully studied, woiked ou into theories, 'and tested by incessant ob servatiun of cause and result on a scal much wider, and more complete and satis factory than auy private practice couk ever.supply. All of us, also, at some time o other, either for ourselves or those deare than ourselves, have known what it wa to live upon every look of the doctor ; to recognize him as the orie human being who is all important to us, on whose 'tal ent, decisión, cautiou, tenderuess, hang everything most precious to us in thi world. Would that all could understanc how much of that which make3 him what he is has been gained within those long dreary ranges of many windowed walls, dedicated to physical suffering and consecrated by its hopeful and merciful alleviation." From the simple standpoint of humanity there is an argument for such provisión for human suffering. Here is where I see the immediate urgency, where 1 ftnd the glorious opportunity. Even our townsmen in general know nothing of the benefits that for two or three years have been imparted within the walls of that inferior dwelling ou this campus that it would be au abuse oí words to cali a hospital. Before me lies a list of seventy-eight cases that in the last six months have come before one department of surgery for treatment. ín another department nearly 100 have been treated in the hospital in two years. In the same space ''2 patients froHi this State and beyond its borders have entered the hospital. Ifc needs no physicians to remind us, as we examine these lists, that the relief, the restoration, the renovation of' the old man into the new, cannot be aggregated. There lies to-day a laboring man, his eyes oponed after a night of years ; he goes home in a few days to work, no longer a pauper but a producer. Now calcúlate the gain on the basis of the dollar. Let the poor masters, let the tax-payers make the figures - and this is only one case, a very simple one, only one lite. We are all beiugs of feeling. Oh, I do wish I could take the little child and set him before you - now blind, lame, disfigured and now made whole - the gloom of his being lifted. ïhis is no fiction - yon der I have seen the fact. It was said a week or two ago in a Detroit'paper (not unfriendly): "The present University Hospital is a practical failure." Ho it is ! There is not the capacity to receive one tithe of what would be the average occupancy of a well ordered iustitution. Soit is. When the hands of a faculty whose skill you ladies and gentlemen, can attest, hang down, beoause there is no place to receive the hundreds of sufferera who aro yet bidden " come without money and without pnce." So it is. The average population of our poor housos is 1,500, and certainly 10 per cent. ara suö'ering, usoless, a burden, though curable uuder the hands of the physieian and surgeon, and scarcely one is brought here. And yet 10 per cent. of the annual cost of niaintaining the xor houses in Michigan would give $10,)00 for a building and $5,000 to equip it. Mr. President, allow me to say to you, who preside over this University, no more with your abiiities of mind Lhan with your eympathies of heart, that in all the ields of benevolence I know of no such opportunity of making from $10,000 to S20.000 do the same ainount of' good as by ocating on or near this campus a hospita] which, whether recognizud as such or not, must be a State institution. There munt he the man of big heart and large purse (not very large either) in Michigan, who only needs to know this glorious opportunity to inonopolize it. My townsinen, let us hurry to rnake this opportunity our own. Let us have the honor, the happiness, to open in our midst the noblest charity tho State can possess. AVe have failed in some local enterprises, but there can be no failure in this. Do I hear the State should do it ? There is too much waste in waiting. The work is too beautif ul, too benefjcial, too holy, to let the impersonal State with its dollars from the ruceipts of custom coma and do it. The individual wunts thepleasant privilege. The State is well disposed - The State is ready in the heart of the Governor whose term of office will be memorable in his care for the er ana tue pauper. But I am speaking too long. 1 will pause. In Jewry was Bethesda, the house of mercy, and we will have our Bethesda with its ñve porches and more, welcoming eveiy f'orm of the poor body's ilis. For our Büthesda are waiting " a great multitude of impotent folks, oí' blind, halt, witbered," in all the fair Piminsulii. It must be built ! It will be built ! And our town shall have in many hearts and homes, the grateful luemory, " there I was made whole." Mrs. Sarah F. Watson murdered her uncle, Hiram Aldridge, on the morning of the 2Oth, at Oak Mills, twenty miles south of Ironton, Mo., by drivinganax in,o hiskull, burying the blade iu his brain ip to the handle. Mrs. Watson confesses laving cominitted the dsed and justifies ;he aot on the ground that her uncle at;empted to outrage herperson. Aldridge was only. twenty yeara old, ani Mrs. Watson is about seventeen.