South Lincoln Street, Chicago, in a
handsome and well-equipped building. It is connected with a medical
school. The history of its origin is best told in the words of the woman
to whom the conception of such an institution first came, Dr. Mary Weeks
Burnett, for several years the physician in charge:--

"In the fall of 1883 there came to a few of us the thought that
there was a point of weakness in the temperance pledge. It
reads, 'We promise to abstain from all liquors--_as a
beverage_.' We had found in many instances in reform work that
pledging to abstain from liquor 'as a beverage,' and leaving the
victim to the unlimited use of it in physicians' prescriptions,
was simply a skirmish with the devil's outposts, that the
conflict, based upon these grounds, was short, and defeat almost
sure; and the great fact remained that the innermost recesses of
evil force and power were by this pledge still left unassailed.
We found that this power of evil had largely entered the homes
of our land through the family physicians, and that willingly or
not, the physicians were being used to bring in even our
innocent children as recruits to this unrighteous warfare.

"Now, how could we hope to eliminate those three little words
'as a beverage' from our pledge?

"In some way we must bring about an arrest of thought in the
minds of 100,000 men and women physicians whose medical
education warranted them in supposing that they knew that of
alcohol which justified them in its full and free use in medical
practice. Nothing short of a great national object lesson could
ever convict and convert this broad constituency through which
the power of darkness is doing his deadliest work.

"In January, 1884, four of us met and organized under the name
of the National Temperance Hospital. To have our sick properly
cared for in our hospital we found that we should be obliged to
train our own nurses. The nurse who has always been accustomed
to administering alcohol under the physician's prescription at
all times and under all circumstances, and to administering it
herself at her own discretion if the physician is not at hand,
is a terror to the temperance physician. So we included in our
charter a Training School for Nurses. It is now open, and we
expect, as the years go by, to send out armed with our training
sc