Growth Of A Hospital

Largely Increased Attendance at Homeopathic Hospital

Increased Receipts

March Receipts Exceeds That of a Whole Year in 1896 - Growing Clinical Advantages

The value and growth of a medical college can be estimated accurately by its hospital facilities - not "claimed", but by the actual number of patients in bed and upon the operating-table brought under the observation of students for diagnosis, treatment and with time for determining and noting results.

The old method of imparting medical instruction by "giving" lectures upon the part ot the instructor and by "taking" them upon the part of the instructed is entirely out of vogue. The hospital is the clinical laboratory, a kind of manual training school in medicine. All practical and useful teaching in a college is, or ought to be, by the laboratory method. Each subject should be explained amply by actual, practical, concrete demonstrations. Especially must this be the case if results at all satisfying are to be attained in Internal Medicine, Surgery, Gynaecology, Ophthalmology or any or all the other departments that have to do with the management of the sick or injured.

The University of Michigan is a very large institution, occupying twenty or more buildings. The most artistic and beautiful of these buildings is the homeopathic hospital. It is situated upon a large lawn of five acres which it and the home for the training school for nurses occupy alone. It is a new building possessing all modern hospital advantages and improvements. Being a state institution, its hundreds of patients come from every county of the state. It also is largely patronized by people from adjoining states. Its capacity, as now equipped, is about a hundred beds. All patients are for clinical use. No private cases are admitted. The entire equipment, attendance and service are for the single purpose of teaching medicine and surgery. The number of patients in this unique clinical laboratory can be estimated from the following data.

The charges to patients vary from six to ten dollars per week, everything included. The income from these charges for last year was fifteen thousand dollars. The growth can be apprehended by considering that since 1897, when the annual receipts were only thirty-five hundred dollars, the receipts have increased so that the end of the present university year (1902-1903, July 1) the money taken in from patients will overrun seventeen thousand dollars. This will not include five hundred dollars for the free beds to which the city of Ann Arbor is entitled. The case receipts for the month of March of this year alone exceed the entire income of the institution for the year 1896 and several of the preceding years. Of course, many hospitals have larger receipts than this, but such hospitals are general and not clinical hospitals or are only partly clinical. Very few, and probably no homeopathic hospital, can make a showing of such growing clinical advantages. The statements here set forth demonstrate fully the remarkable advancement of this department during the past six years and also prove that the clinic is abundantly sufficient in all lines of practical work. While the benefit that this hospital is doing the medical student is paramount, it must not be forgotten that, really, the good that is done for people of the state who are in moderate or embarrassed financial circumstances is inestimable. 

Farmers, farmers' wives, mechanics and their dependents, laboring men and their households, contribute very largely to the clientele, and for a comparatively small sum, they receive, often times, in a single instance, hundreds of dollars' worth of benefit.

Everyone familiar with the facts admits that the development, the substantial gains, the enterprising progressive spirit, the standard of attained qualifications and the future promise of this college and hospital equal if they do not exceed those of any other homeopathic institution.