HUNDREDS INSPECT THE
NEW GENERAL HOSPITAL.
Patients Will Be Moved From the
Old Building Today -- There's
Room for 400.
Soon after Dr. J. Park Neal, house surgeon, had given the signal to throw open the doors of the new general hospital yesterday morning, the visitors began arriving. The whole building was open for inspection from the kitchen in the basement up to the fourth floor. Those interested in the institution roamed at will through the wards and operating rooms and the nurses quarters.
Entering the main door of the hospital building the visitors were met by the white-coated interne, who welcomed the people and extended an invitation for everyone to feel at home. In the office to the left of the entrance of the building the telephone switchboard was dotted here and there with lights of the calls from the various wards, while the clerical force seemed to be busy getting things in order. The house surgeon spent most of his time during the day in his office, shaking hands with the physicians and surgeons who called. Dr. Neal endeavored to personally conduct through the building all of the doctors who paid a visit to the city's new institution.
Representatives of several branches of the city government visited the new hospital, while many doctors and their allies, the nurses, were out in force. Others not personally connected with the hospital, but desirous of seeing the well equipped hospital lingered in the halls and operating rooms. Many of the visitors yesterday had at some time or other been patients in the old city hospital and were loud in praise of Kansas City for building and equipping the institution. The visitors came singly, in pairs and in crowds. Dr. Neal said late yesterday afternoon that he believed there were from 200 to 300 people in the building every minute since the doors were first opened at 8 o'clock.
Visitors were allowed to examine the hospital until 10 o'clock last night when the doors were closed and preparations begun to make the long delayed change from the old to the new quarters. The first meal to be served in the new building will be lunch at noon today. From that time on the new city general hospital, which will accommodate 400 patients, will be in full and complete running order. It was strange, but there was not a flower sent to the hospital authorities on the grand opening day, and the omission was noticed by many of the visitors.
