PATIENTS SLEEPING IN TENTS.
General Hospital Is Crowded to Point
of Discomfort.
The new general hospital is certainly a badly needed thing," said an officer at the hospital yesterday. "Look at the crowded condition of the place we are in now. On one side, not more than ten feet away from the walls of the hospital, is the city smallpox pest house, which was put here because the floods drove it out of the East Bottoms The situation of the pest house so close to the main building of the hospital has been a danger which is hard to overestimate.
"In the inclosed space in the middle of the building is the tent in which several patients from the female ward sleep nightly. These are not cases in which open air treatment has been recommended, but they must sleep out there because there is not room enough for them to sleep in the hospital.
"There is another tent on the north side of the building where male patients sleep out of doors for the same reason. The capacity of the hospital exclusive of these outgrowths is 185 patients.
"We expect to move into the new building in two weeks. It will accommodate 540 patients, and will be superior in every way to the building we are now occupying. To say that we welcome the approaching change with gladness is to speak mildly."
