by the Hon. Hoke Smith, Secretary of the Interior, at the request of Secretary of State Gresham. Before coming to Washington, Dr. Williams was connected with the Provident Hospital, of Chicago, in which institution both Judge and Mrs. Gresham were interested. For four years he was connected with the Illinois State Board of Health and for eight years was attending physician to the Protestant Orphan Asylum in Chicago.

The grounds on which the hospital buildings are located are valued at $100,000, and the buildings themselves at about $40,000. With the exception of the brick structure occupied as a dispensary, an administrative building, and a medical college, the buildings are of wood, are cheaply constructed, and are heated by stoves. The hospital provides for about 500 persons each year and has a daily average of from 175 to 200 patients in both hospital and dispensary. About one-third of the patients are white, and all are charity patients. Admission is through the Secretary of the Interior, the sanitary officer of the District of Columbia, and the physicians to the poor. The Secretary alone can order patients to be received. It is estimated by the surgeon in chief that about one-half of the patients are not residents of the District of Columbia.1

In his testimony before the Joint Committee on the Charities and Reformatory Institutions in the District of Columbia, Dr. Williams tated that the Freedmen's Hospital, one hospital in Chicago, and as small hospital in Baltimore, are the only ones in which a colored man can obtain medical training, or a colored woman can be trained as a nurse. The training school for nurses was organized on its present basis by Dr. Williams. Four colored men and one white man are employed as interns, taking the place of two salaried assistant surgeons formerly employed. The sum of $3,000 thus saved is devoted to the pay of the interns at a sum not exceeding $10 a month, and of the nurses at $7 a month. The 40 nurses are under the superintendence of Miss S. C. Ebersole, who came to the Freedmen's Hospital on the recommendation of the authorities of Johns Hopkins Hospital. The length of course for nurses is two years. The income of the hospital ($54,025 in 1896-97) comes entirely from the Treasury, the appropriation being made in the District of Columbia appropriation bill. The Secretary of the Interior manages the institution, but the expenditures are under the control of the Commissioners of the District of Columbia.

IV.

The National Homeopathic Hospital was incorporated June 10, 1881, under the general incorporation law. For two years after its organization the corporation had no hospital building. The first year the

1 Testimony of Dr. Williams, Senate Doc. No. 185, Fifty-fifth Congress, First Ses sion, page 268.

UNION WITH GARFIELD HOSPITAL PROPOSED.

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receipts were $85; the second year, $229.50; the third year the hospital was practically closed, and the receipts were but $60. The year following the receipts rose to little less than $3,000, of which $1,839.40 was raised by the association now known as the Ladies' Aid Association. From this date forward the receipts increased until they amounted in the aggregate, on December 31, 1891, to $101,996.23. Of this sum a little less than $19,000 was raised by the Ladies' Aid Association. The proceeds from the fair given by the National Homeopathic Hospital Association in 1885 were $2,708, and up to 1892 about $20,000 had been received from patients, notwithstanding the fact that the hospital was closed for four months in 1889. The total receipts from donations during the first decade were $3,931.10 and from membership fees, $930. The early records of the hospital are not available, but the origin of the enterprise seems to have been the movement (in 1881) that culminated in the selection by the hospital trustees of a board of 200 lady managers, which organization immediately began to raise money by concerts and excursions. While working for the Homeopathic Hospital a project for a union with the Garfield Memorial Hospital (also chartered in 1881), with the view of establishing "a grand unsectarian hospital, where both systems of medicine could be fairly and openly tried," was entered into by a number of the lady managers of the former institution. In November, 1882, however, a number of the lady managers who were not favorable to the union obtained a charter and established a dispensary. In the autumn of 1883 Mrs. G. S. Wilcox and Mrs. G. W. Pope interested many other persons in the hospital enterprise, and at a public meeting a new board of trustees was selected, and a small building on F street, between Eleventh and Twelfth streets, was secured. During 1884 luncheons, fairs, concerts, and other like entertainments realized a sum sufficient to carry on the work.

It was at this time that the managers of the Garfield Memorial Hospital finally declined to grant to the homeopaths an equal representation on their board of trustees, and thereupon a committee of ladies, consisting of Mrs. Charles Nordhoff, Mrs. F. L. Freeman, and Mrs. E. B. Wright, by an appeal to Congress for the recognition of a homeopathic hospital among the charities of the District, secured an appropriation of $15,000 for the purchase or erection of a building. In 1885 a second committee, consisting of Mrs. Sara A. Spencer, Mrs. A. F. Childs, Mrs. John Ellis, Mrs. Robert Stevens, Mrs. Isabella M. Bittinger, Mr. Alonzo Bell, and Mr. Elias S. Hutchinson, secured from Congress a further appropriation of $5,000; and in January, 1876, the present building was opened. The work of planning the changes devolved on a building committee, made up of Mr. Elias S. Hutchinson, Mr. Lewis Clephane, and Mr. G. H. Wilcox.

The president of the association in 1888 was Chief Justice Morrison R. Waite, of the United States Supreme Court; the vice-presidents were Mr. Hutchinson and Mrs. Nordhoff; the secretary was Mr. Joseph

M. Wilson, and the treasurer was Mr. Lewis Clephane. Mr. A. S. Pratt was president of the board of trustees.

For the purchase and fitting up of the grounds and building now occupied by the hospital, at the corner of N and Second streets NW., Congress appropriated in all $29,500; and for maintenance during the first ten years of the hospital's existence $23,000 was appropriated.1 During the same period the hospital spent $61,446.99 for maintenance, hospital appliances, tools, incidental repairs, and sundries. During that time the hospital accommodated 1,000 patients. At the time the hos pital was established there were about a dozen homeopathic physicians in the city, and at the end of the ten years this number had increased to 50 homeopathic physicians in successful practice in Washington.

The management of the hospital is intrusted to a board of trustees, the medical staff, and the hospital committee. Aside from the trustees there is a hospital association which has its own officers. In 1891 Hon. Roswell P. Flower, a member of the House of Representatives from New York, was the president; E. S. Hutchinson and Mrs. Charles Nordhoff were the vice-presidents, and Lewis Clephane was the secretary. Of the board of trustees, John Joy Edson was the president; A. S. Pratt and Mrs. I. M. Bittinger were the vice-presidents; William Redin Woodward was the secretary; Job Barnard was the treasurer, and Charles B. Bailey, Henry M. Baker, Mrs. Thomas H. Martin, and Mrs. Sara A. Spencer were the other members of the board.

man.

The hospital committee consisted of Mr. Edson, Mr. Bailey, Mr. Barnard, Mrs. A. F. Childs, Mrs. A. H. Davis, and Mrs. Harrison DingThe emeritus staff of the hospital was made up of Drs. Tuleo S. Verdi, Gustavus W. Pope, and Simon I. Groot. Dr. J. B. G. Custis was the chief of the staff, and with him were associated Drs. Edward Janney, Grace Roberts, Ralph Jenkins, Daniel H. Riggs, Lyman B. Swormstedt, Charles B. Gilbert, Henry Krogstad, and S. S. Stearns, the members of the staff being elected to serve three years.

In 1892 Hon. John Dalzell, Member of Congress from Pennsylvania, was elected president of the association to succeed Hon. Roswell P. Flower, which position he stills retains.

In 1892 the hospital received a letter from the president of the Ladies' Aid Association, Mrs. A. R. Quaiffe, guaranteeing from that association a sufficient sum to open a training school for nurses. The report of the president for this year shows that the members of the medical staff

1

The hospital was established on January 15, 1884, on F street, between Eleventh and Twelfth streets NW. From this building the hospital was removed, October 30, 1884, to No. 520 Third street NW. The present building was erected for a brewery and was afterwards used as a public school. It was opened as a hospital in February, 1885.

2 Dr. Verdi, after a service of many years as chief of the medical staff of the hospital, declined reelection as a member of the staff, and was made a member of the emeritus staff under the provision of the by-laws that provides that those physicians and surgeons who have served six years on the medical staff of the hospital shall, by virtue of such service, become members of the emeritus medical staff.