Advocated Before The Council

The subject which elicited the most interest and discussion at Monday's council meeting was the report of Dr. Hinsdale for the health committee of the council on the subject of a detention hospital. The report in full is as follows:

To the Honorable the Council of the City of Ann Arbor: Gentlemen -- the committee to whom was referred the matter of a detention hospital beg to make the following report:

Two or three conferences have been held by your committee, jointly, with several members of the medical profession of the city. The opinion expressed by those who attended the conferences is to the effect that a detention hospital is absolutely necessary and should be provided before another winter. The regents of the University have expressed a willingness to consider a proposition from the city looking towards mutual and joint accommodations. It is the opinion of your committee if the city will appropriate about ten thousand dollars for the purpose of making adequate, permanent and modern accommodations for such cases of small pox and other diseases dangerous to public health as may require isolation and quarantine, from time to time, that it will be a wise expenditure.

The demands for an isolation and detention hospital are so evident that argument in its favor is unnecessary. It is recommended by your committee, therefore, that a formal proposition be made to the regents that the City of Ann Arbor will contribute $10,000 to building jointly with the University a hospital, upon grounds to be provided by the university, to cost not less than $20,000; provided the city be guaranteed in perpetuity, or so long as the hospital so built may stand, sufficient and adequate accommodations for such cases of infectious diseases as it may wish to place therein. The maintenance, service and equipment of the hospital to be provided by the University free of cost except the running expenses.

Very respectfully submitted, , GEO. H. FISCHER.   HENRY W. DOUGLAS. Committee.  V. B. HINSDALE, Health Officer.

June 15, 1903.

The recommendation of the committee that a proposition be made to the regents pledging the city to contribute $10,000 toward a joint detention hospital to cost at least $20,000 was earnestly discussed. It seemed to be the sentiment of all the aldermen who joined in the discussion that something should be done and that it would not meet the demands to simply put a few hundred dollars Into a so-called pest house which at best would scarcely be a fit place for a patient to be taken to.

Ald. Hutzel, while agreeing that a detention hospital was a much needed auxiliary to the public safety in time of contagious diseases was not clear as to where the money was to come from at this time to meet the city's share of the cost.

Dr. Hinsdale made an earnest plea for some definitive action, saying that the regent would not listen to the committee until it had some definite proposition to present to the board. He declared that the county was paying half the sum named in the committee's report each year for the care of patients afflicted with contagious disease. But, he said, the cost was not the important point to be considered. The matter of cost ought not to stand in the way of protection to life and the proper guarantee of the safety of one and all from the danger of malignant communicable diseases.

He set forth the advantages of a partnership with the University in this project. The University, he said, had the ground on which such a building could be erected, it had sufficient heat to warm it without additional expense, light to light it, trained nurses to care for the patients and physicians to give needed medical treatment.

President Walz suggested that inasmuch as the bills for caring for patients afflicted with the before mentioned diseases were ultimately borne by the county, it might be well to invite the board of supervisors to participate in the project.

Ald. Grose thought this was scarcely feasible because patients could not be moved here from remote parts of the county. Ald. Douglas said he was informed by physicians that it was entirely practicable to move patients.

After considerable farther discussion the matter was finally referred back to the committee with instructions to confer with the board of supervisors at its October meeting and secure the judgment of that body as to the practicability and desirability of uniting with the city in the furtherance of the proposition. This reference of the matter was made after the statement by Alderman Douglas that it was his understanding that the University had no money that it could put into a detention hospital this year, and as the city was in practically the same condition, such reference to enlist the assistance of the county was probably about all that could now be done.