Caring for the sick and preventing illness
Media
Part of The Young Citizen: The Magazine for Young People
- Title
- Caring for the sick and preventing illness
- Year
- 1941
- Rights
-
- Fulltext
- 292 THE YOUNG CITIZEN AuGusT, 1941 CARING FOR THE SICK AND PREVENTING ILLNESS . SICK PEOPLE-really sick. people-are Surgeons has attempted to. "standardize" lucky today if they can be cared for in a hospitals according to certain principles: good hospital. There they can have the adequate means of finding a diagnosis, expert care of· the best physicians· and that is, finding out what is the matter with surgeons, trained nurses in attendance a patient; the keeping of ad-equate r�cords when needed night or day, all the dis- of treatment of patients and the results coveries and appliances of modern science obtained; and other improvements. and skill to find out what the matter is A medical graduate is not granted, in and put it right; a specially trained di.eti- most places, a licence to practise until he tian to see that they have the proper food has spent a year or more as an intern in -in short, every comfort and care needed some recognized hospital, where he to give the· best chance for recovery. works ·under the supervision of the staff The principles of modern hospital physicians and surgeons. organization had their rise, through the Most general hospitals conduct train genius of Florence Nightingale, out of ing schools for nurses. A good hospital the terrible sufferings of the Crimean usually gives good training. War, as did the profession of nursing, . D!spensary and out-patient work for without which the modern hospital could patients not confined to bed is increasing not exist. ly important in the general hospital. Pay A few years later the chemist Pasteur clinics for people with small means who discovered the relation of germs to put- do not wish to accept free treatment hav-e refaction, and the great surgeon Lister met a great need. revolutionized· operating room praCtice In addition to general hospitals,- there by the use of antiseptics.' Almost every are a number of hospitals devoted to year since then there has been some ad- special classes of diseases, such as chil vance, great or small, in medical science dren's diseases, tuberculosis, cancer, lep and hospital practice. And all of this is rosy, etc. Sanitariums are (or the r-esi available to the poor as well as the rich. dential treatment of chronic conditions. l\1ost general .hospitals have free However, we must not depend entirely wards, semi-private wards, and private upon hospitals to keep us well. We must rooms for patients. There are hospitals practise the rules of hygiene at home, and· operated by cities, provinces or states; prevent ourselves from going to the hos there are army and navy hospitals; there pi tal as .mucb as possible .. are public hospitals founded by private Hygiene deals with the causes and endowment; there· are public hospitals prevention of disease in their relation to supported by churches, industrial com- the preservation of health. In this sense panics, an� fraternal organizations; and hygiene has been well named preventive private hospitals for private patients of medicine. individual physicians and surgeons. The advance of medical· science, toIn the United States and the Philip- gether with the spread of education, is pines are some of the finest hospitals in teaching people to realize the necessity the world. The American College of of personal and social hygiene.