Owing To The High Rates Of House-Rent And The Difficulty Of Procuring
Servants, Together With The Exorbitant Wages Which
They require, many
married couples, and even families, reside permanently at the hotels.
Living constantly in public, without opportunity for
Holding family
intercourse, and being without either home cares or home pleasures,
nomade, restless, pleasure-seeking habits are induced, which have led
strangers to charge the Americans with being destitute of home life. That
such is the case to some extent is not to be denied; but this want is by
no means generally observed. I have met with family circles in the New
World as united and affectionate as those in the Old, not only in country
districts, but in the metropolis itself; and in New England there is
probably as much of what may be termed patriarchal life as anywhere in
Europe.
The public charities of New York are on a gigantic scale. The New York
Hospital, a fine stone building with some large trees in front, situated
in Broadway, was one which pleased me as much as any. Two of the
physicians kindly took me over the whole building, and explained all the
arrangements. I believe that the hospital contains 650 beds, and it is
generally full, being not only the receptacle for the numerous accident
cases which are of daily occurrence in New York, but for those of a large
district besides, which are conveniently brought in by railroad. We first
went into the recent-accident room, where the unhappy beings who were
recently hurt or operated upon were lying. Some of them were the most
piteous objects I ever witnessed, and the medical men, under the
impression that I was deeply interested in surgery, took pains to exhibit
all the horrors. There were a good many of the usual classes of
accidents, - broken limbs and mangled frames. There was one poor little boy
of twelve years old, whose arms had been torn to pieces by machinery; one
of them had been amputated on the previous day, and, while the medical men
displayed the stump, they remarked that the other must be taken off on the
next day. The poor boy groaned with a more than childish expression of
agony on his pale features, probably at the thought of the life of
helplessness before him. A young Irishman had been crushed by a railway
car, and one of his legs had been amputated a few hours previously. As the
surgeon altered the bandages he was laughing and joking, and had been
singing ever since the operation - a remarkable instance of Paddy's
unfailing lightheartedness.
But, besides these ordinary accidents, there were some very characteristic
of New York and of a New York election. In one ward there were several men
who had been stabbed the night before, two of whom were mortally wounded.
There were two men, scarcely retaining the appearance of human beings, who
had been fearfully burned and injured by the explosion of an infernal
machine. All trace of human features had departed; it seemed hardly
credible that such blackened, distorted, and mangled frames could contain
human souls. There were others who had received musket-shot wounds during
the election, and numbers of broken heads, and wounds from knives. It was
sad to know that so much of the suffering to be seen in that hospital was
the result of furious religious animosities, and of the unrestrained
lawlessness of human violence.
There was one man who had been so nearly crushed to pieces, that it seemed
marvellous that the mangled frame could still retain its vitality. One leg
was broken in three places, and the flesh torn off from the knee to the
foot; both arms and several ribs were also broken. We went into one of the
female wards, where sixteen broken legs were being successfully treated,
and I could not but admire a very simple contrivance which remedies the
contraction which often succeeds broken limbs, and produces permanent
lameness. Two long straps of plaister were glued from above the knee to
the ankle, and were then fixed to a wooden bar, with a screw and handle,
so that the tension could be regulated at pleasure. The medical men, in
remarking upon this, observed that in England we were very slow to adopt
any American improvements in surgery or medicine.
There were many things in this hospital which might be imitated in England
with great advantage to the patients. Each ward was clean, sweet, and
airy; and the system of heating and ventilation is very superior. The
heating and ventilating apparatus, instead of sending forth alternate
blasts of hot and cold air, keeps up a uniform and easily regulated
temperature. A draught of cold air is continually forced through a large
apparatus of steam-pipes, and, as it becomes vitiated in the rooms above,
passes out through ventilators placed just below the ceiling. Our next
visit was to the laundry, where two men, three women, and, last but not
least, a steam-engine of 45-horse power, were perpetually engaged in
washing the soiled linen of the hospital. The large and rapidly-moving
cylinder which churns the linen is a common part of a steam laundry, but
the wringing machine is one of the most beautiful practical applications
of a principle in natural philosophy that I ever saw. It consists of a
large perforated cylinder, open at the top, with a case in the centre.
This cylinder performs from 400 to 700 revolutions in a minute, and, by
the power of the centrifugal force thus produced, the linen is impelled so
violently against the sides, that the moisture is forced through the
perforations, when the linen is left nearly dry.
Strange as it may appear to those who associate America with plenty and
comfort, there is a very large class of persons at New York living in a
state of squalid and abject poverty; and in order that the children
belonging to it may receive some education, it has been found necessary by
the benevolent to supplement the common school system with ragged or
industrial schools.
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