Health is notified promptly.

Other things being equal, an acute case of illness can usually be
better and more economically cared for in a hospital than in a poor
home. In fact, although hospitals were intended originally for the
destitute sick, the practice of sending well-to-do patients there is
rapidly spreading. The prejudice against hospitals, still so general
among the poor, is a survival from a time when hospital care was far
less humane than now. If the visitor has ever been a patient in a
hospital, and can tell his own experience or the experiences of
friends, or if he happens to know some of the doctors or nurses, and
promises to see them about his poor friend, the prejudice can often be
overcome. The dread of the untried and the unknown is natural enough,
and yet it will happen now and then that hospital care is so clearly
the best thing that nothing can take the place {102} of it, and
suffering and loss will be entailed upon the family by their refusal to
let the sick member go. In such cases charitable people may be
justified in helping the family to a right decision by withholding all
relief.

The prejudice against hospitals is strong in the negro race. In the
first family I ever visited the mother, a colored woman, had been
bedridden for thirteen months. According to her own account she had
been "conjured," and at first the mention of a hospital made her
hysterical. She consented to let a doctor, who was a friend of mine,
see her, and he pronounced her disease sciatic rheumatism. He said she
could never get well at home with four small, noisy children, and,
besides, the walls of her house were damp. After two months of
persuading, I got the mother into a hospital and the family moved into
a dry house. Among the arguments that won her were my own acquaintance
with the hospital nurses, and my promise to visit her frequently while
there; and my further promise to see that the children were well cared
for while she was away. But the argument that tipped the scale was the
{103} promise to take her away to the hospital in a carriage with two
horses.

Among the cases in which hospital care is not practicable are those of
chronic invalids, of patients too sick to be moved, and of patients
able to be treated as "out-patients" in the dispensaries. Confinement
cases, where there are children in the family who must be placed
temporarily in institutions if the mother leaves home, are best treated
in