A TRAVELING HOSPITAL FOR RURAL NEEDS
A Traveling Hospital for Rural Needs APRESSING NEED of our rural districts is for the same kind of hospital treatment which is open to even the poorest inhabitants of our city slums. Dr. C. W....
...The difficulties to be overcome in establishing these trains are not insurmountable, and the expense need not be greater than that connected with any other hospital...
...The remedy which he proposes for these evils is a traveling hospital, equipped for the minor surgical work on children suggested above and for the repair of obstetric injuries or gynecologic ailments...
...Stiles believes that this work is more important than the teaching of the farmers by special school trains how to increase their crops or how to take care of their live stock...
...The average mother with whom he comes in contact in field work is attended in her confinements, rarely by a physician or a trained nurse, usually by some of the neighbors or a dirty and ignorant midwife, with the result that injuries frequently occur which are never properly treated...
...He believes that it would be a comparatively simple matter to fit out a special hospital train of from three to six cars and take it to districts without hospitals...
...The Journal of the American Medical Association, commenting on Stiles' experience, says that the suggestion is the more valuable coming from Stiles, as he has had practical experience on laboratory trains in the rural districts in which research and observations were conducted on school children...
...The traveling hospital could also be utilized to bring about such results as much-needed postgraduate medical instruction to local physicians...
...ideas on cooking, housekeeping, infant-feeding, etc, to mothers...
...C. W. Stiles has made some observations on this subject as a part of his work with the Hookworm Commission...
...This has shown him the need, the practicability and the possibilities of such a hospital train as he suggest...
...He also finds large numbers of children who are handicapped in their physical and mental development by large tonsils and adenoids, and by defective eyes and teeth...
...He says, moreover, that the average country woman (white or black) with whom he comes in contact has exceedingly rudimentary ideas on cooking, housekeeping and care of children and the sick, and to meet the needs of this side of the problem the district nurse would be invaluable...
...ideas on sanitation to the fathers, and special instruction along health lines to the schools...
Vol. 5 • April 1913 • No. 15
