GENERAL HOSPITAL IS
ALMOST INACCESSIBLE.
Roadway Is Muddy, Narrow and
Dangerous, Almost Impossible to
Traverse at Night.
The new general hospital is a great thing. The wards are large and airy, the sanitation is perfect, the nurses and doctors are first class and the facilities for treating emergency cases excellent -- in the emergency cases could reach the hospital. In other words, the matter with the new hospital is that it is almost inaccessible, especially after nightfall.
A complaint comes from the police. The ambulance from the Walnut street station takes a case or two to the hospital every night. Last night a man with a broken leg was taken there. The ambulance spent about a minute getting from Nineteenth and Main streets, the scene of the accident, to Twenty-first street and Gillham road. Then it took fifteen minutes to get the last 100 yards of the journey.
There are only two ways by which vehicles can get to the hospital. One was is by Twenty-fourth and Cherry streets, and the other is by the Gillham road entrance. The ambulance entered by the latter way, because it is closer and safer. There are no lights in the vicinity of the hospital and the whole hill is in darkness. The entrance is by a winding mud road and it is so narrow, twisting and dark that a policeman was compelled to walk in front of the horses to pick out the way and prevent the animals from falling in one of the many ditches. Meanwhile the man with the broken leg was suffering excruciating agony.
If the ambulance had gone around by the other entrance it would have been necessary to climb the Holmes street hill, which the horses are compelled to take at a walk. In either case the vehicle would be in danger of overturning several times.
"It seems strange to me," said a police officer last night, "that a couple of hundred dollars could not have been subtracted from the thousands that it took to build the hospital and used to make the place accessible. It is a strange anomaly to see a dozen doctors waiting inside the hospital in the operating room for the patient, who is meantime stuck in the mud outside and possibly dying for lack of attention.
"Within a block of the place is Gillham road, one of the finest thoroughfares to be found in the city, and half a dozen other streets that are kept in good condition. The new hospital has been built several months now and there has been plenty of time to build suitable approaches. I would like to know who to blame."
