The board of directors issued on March 1, 1883, the first report of the president of Garfield Memorial Hospital, which showed that the total receipts from all sources had been $17,023.36; that there were in process of collection $2,300 in foreign bills, and that (including $5,520.27 raised by the Ladies' Aid Society) the amount available was $23,901.07. The report also mentioned the receipt from the trustees of the Soldiers' and Sailors' Orphans' Home of the property known as the "Wirt House." This transfer, probably suggested by Dr. Ashford, was the real foundation of the Garfield Memorial Hospital. Its value was double the amount of the subscriptions made during the first year, and, what was more important, the passage of the enabling act by Congress brought out the latent opposition to the hospital and enabled its promoters to win such a substantial victory as to give the project a recognized standing before both Congress and the public.1

On July 10, 1882, Mr. Neal, chairman of the House Committee on the District of Columbia, reported from that committee the bill to authorize the transfer of the property of the National Soldiers' and Sailors' Orphans' Home to the Garfield Memorial Hospital, and asked for immediate consideration.2 In support of this measure Mr. Neal had the resolutions of the medical society and a memorial signed by 85 physcians, setting forth the necessity of such a hospital, and he had also the sentiment created on behalf of a memorial hospital. The opponents of the measure, headed by Mr. Blount, produced a counter memorial, signed by 26 physicians of standing and reputation, in which it was alleged that the sick poor of the District of all classes, creeds, and nationalities were amply provided with gratuitous hospital accommodations, and that the floating population was provided for in existing hospitals at a reasonable cost. The protest continues:

The Columbia Hospital for women provides all that is necessary for the treatment of special diseases of female pay or pauper patients. The Children's Hospital is an institution exclusively devoted to the medical and surgical treatment of children, and provides all needed accommodations for such patients. St. Ann's Infancy Asylum accommodates all destitute infants left to its care. The Freedmen's Hospital is "mainly a hospital for the sick of the African race, but is open to white patients, and is satisfactorily fulfilling its mission." The almshouse hospital accommodates a class that drifts into such institutions. The Emergency Hospital, located near the center of the city, is prepared to attend accidents and emergencies.

1 Dr. Busey, in his Reminiscences, page 226, says: "I can not assert it as a fact, but my recollection and belief are that Dr. Ashford was the first to suggest the acquisition of the property of the Soldiers' and Sailors' Orphans Home. I do know that he held numerous interviews with some of the trustees, especially with the Rev. Dr. Sunderland and Chief Justice Cartter and with Mr. Neal, the chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on the District of Columbia, in regard to the transfer of the property. I was present at several of the interviews with Judge Cartter and can testify that he accepted the proposition with marked enthusiasm and gave to it his earnest support. Judge Cartter's opinion in regard to the necessity of the passage of the enabling act and his advocacy of the transfer constituted the turning point in the success of the scheme."

H. R. 6702, Forty-seventh Congress, first session,

Providence Hospital, under the charge of the Sisters of Charity, has public wards, to which free patients are admitted, and private wards and rooms for pay patients at rates varying from $6 to $20 per week. It receives an appropriation from Congress for the maintenance of transient sick paupers admitted upon the order of the Surgeon-General of the United States Army. Resident paupers are admitted at the request of the sanitary officer, Metropolitan police, a request that is never refused. It is thus seen that Providence Hospital cares for all the sick poor, transient and resident, who apply for treatment, "and there is no distinction made on account of creed, nationality, or color." The above statement and the additional fact that the capacity of the hospitals heretofore mentioned has always exceeded the demand must make it plain to the observant that the hospitals of the District of Columbia more than meet all present requirements, and that while separately performing their allotted duties the combined work of these institutions creates a general hospital in its best form, a condition of separation which accords with the approved laws of hygiene.

Should the future demand increased accommodations, it will be wiser by donations and appropriations to enlarge the powers of existing organized institutions than by too ambitious and hasty action run the risk of creating a standing bid for pauperism, for it is to be feared that a superabundance of hospitals here might entice a class not desired by our citizens or legislature.1

Dr. Busey says that "this protest had been prepared with great care and had been concealed from the public and the management of the Garfield Hospital until it was suddenly thrust into the debate on the bill in the House, just at the moment when its most vindictive opponent believed it would defeat the enabling act. It set forth in very emphatic and cogent language the interests of the Providence Hospital,' and equally distinctly, but erroneously, intimated that the efforts to establish Garfield Hospital were in antagonism to that insti tution. It sought to eliminate the influence of the medical society and of the 85 physicians by misrepresenting their memorial, and attempted by adroit extracts of parts of sentences to assail the veracity of the 85 memorialists. To it were signed the names of 26 physicians, most of whom were actively engaged in practice, and several were men of prominence and very great influence.""

The protest was ineffective. The bill passed both Houses of Congress and became a law on August 8, 1882. On October 2 of that year D. K. Cartter, president, and Marcellus Bailey, secretary, acting under instructions from the board of trustees of the National Soldiers' and Sailors' Orphans' Home, joined in a deed conveying to Garfield Memorial Hospital all the property of the Orphans' Home, with the power "to sell, convey, transfer, and convert the said property, or any part thereof, into cash at its option." Thereupon the board of incorpora

'This protest was signed by the following physicians: Johnson Eliot, James E. Morgan, S. A. H. McKim, Ralph Walsh, G. L. Magruder, Z. T. Sowers, John W. Bayne, H. H. Barker, Llewellyn Eliot, L. W. Richie, W. G. H. Newman, J. F. Hartigan, J. Walter, Carroll Morgan, James McV. Mackall, Daniel J. Kelly, Thomas N. McLaughlin, James T. Young, John I. Dyer, J. S. Harrison, C. V. N. Callan, P. J. Murphy, H. M. Newman, George C. Samson, John Parsons, and J. O. Stanton. * Reminiscences, p. 234.

3 The deed was recorded October 5, 1882, liber 1016, folio 195.

tors took possession of the "Wirt House," No. 1732 G street NW., and there held their meetings. The value of the property thus turned over proved to be $39,708.03.1

In the plan of organization adopted it was provided that "one ward in the hospital shall be appropriated to the homeopathic treatment for such patients as desire it, and the directors shall provide for that purpose." The medical members of the board who were present stoutly opposed the adoption of this paragraph. Dr. Toner then expressed and soon after carried out his intention to resign. The other medical members protested and waited. The storm created by the action of the board again threatened the defeat of the project. The timely election of Dr. John S. Billings to a place on the board and his leadership in securing a repeal of the controverted paragraph on February 19, 1883, restored to the enterprise that support of the local physicians of the medical society which had temporarily been withdrawn.2

The original plan of the hospital provided that of the fifteen directors four should be practitioners of medicine. This paragraph of the bylaws was repealed after the death of Dr. Ashford,3 and at the present time Dr. John S. Billings, U. S. A., stationed in Philadelphia, is the only physician on the board. On the board of incorporators, however, Dr. Samuel C. Busey, Dr. William W. Johnston, and Dr. J. Ford Thompson, as well as Dr. Billings, have places. The management of the hospital is in the hands of fifteen directors, each of whom is elected to serve for three years. Five directors are elected annually by the board of incorporators, and the directors name the medical staff. The board of incorporators is a self-perpetuating body.

On May 31, 1883, the incorporators elected a board of directors, and active work began. A site comprising 7 acres was purchased for

1 Hospital report for 1886.

Dr. Busey's Reminiscences, p. 237. Dr. Busey says: "To Surgeon Billings honor, praise and gratitude are due from the management as from the medical profession of this District. His election to the directorship was the turning point at the critical moment of its history, and stayed the influences leading to discontent, controversy, disappointment, and failure, and restored the institution to the course and purpose fostered by its projectors and founders.

3 Dr. Francis A. Ashford died May 19, 1883. He was a resident of Virginia when the war of the rebellion broke out, and was in the Confederate army from Ball's Bluff to Petersburg, where he was wounded and captured. After his release from prison at the close of the war he studied medicine with Dr. Thomas Miller. He began practice in 1867, and was immediately appointed resident physician of Columbia Hospital; afterwards he was assistant surgeon and a director of that institution. He was the attending surgeon of the Children's Hospital from its beginning until his death. He was the professor of surgery in Georgetown College. The memorial resolution of the directors of the Garfield Hospital recites: "It is due to the memory of Dr. Ashford to give a sincere expression of our appreciation of his services in the institution of this hospital, and to say that to him more than to any other is due the credit of initiating this undertaking and by his unobtrusive energy of putting it in the path of success." He died before the hospital entered upon its work.-Dr. Busey's Reminiscences, pp. 116, 188-189, 238.