Page Eight

THE JEWISH NEWS

Friday, December 8, 1944

Goldwater's
A Jewish Hospital as a Dr. Letters:
Public Service

As Dr. Morris Fishbein

Sees Detroit's Needs

A 40-year-old community aspiration for the establishment
of a Jewish hospital in Detroit is nearing fruition.
Having the unqualified support of all elements in the com-
munity and the blessings of our non-Jewish neighbors, the hos-
pital movement here has attracted country-wide attention.
Three years ago, Dr. Morris Fishbein, editor of the American
Medical Journal and secretary of the American Medical Asso-
ciation, discussed the proposed hospital in an address here in
the course of which he said •

I HAVE CERTAIN
ideas about the place that Jewish
people in general should occupy in
a community of which they are
an integral part.

"

It is rather ridiculous that De-
troit should not be among those
twenty-three cities that have gen-
eral Jewish hospitals.

The Place of the Physician

"I am of course familiar with the
fact that a great many Jewish
physicians in Detroit hold staff
appointments in some hospitals in
this vicinity, but I am thinking
not of the few pioneers, because
the pioneers, the men who were
first on the ground, though
Jewish, are very frequently very-
well associated. As the commun-
ity grows and its numbers in-
crease, there is less and less ten-
= clency to recognize any but the
very outstanding -men in the com-
munity, and even they may have
difficulty in becoming associated
with staff appointments suitable
to their age and ability, in existing
institutions.

A hospital has certain definite
functions, regardless of whether or
not it is a Jewish hospital, a Cath-
olic hospital, a Presbyterian hos-
pital or a community hospital.
When we began to introduce the
elaborate equipment that is now
employed in medicine, it was no
longer possible for the average
physician to carry on such treat-
ments in his office or in the home
of the patient. In addition to that,
as the hospital developed, we be-
gan to find that medicine involved
not only the services of doctors,
but the services of a great many
people. The vast majority of the
care of the sick is conducted in
non-profit voluntary hospitals.

A Public Service

It is impossible to conduct a
whole hospital for profit; and the
conduct of a hospital today is a
public service. It goes on, not for
the benefit of the doctors, but pri-
marily for public service. Most of
these non-profit hospitals are con-
ducted by religious and charitable
organizations because the • care of
the sick is fundamental, and every
great religion has realized that.

It would be a supreme, piece of
folly for a Jewish group to deny
that they represent a very special
problem, no matter where they
happen to be. While we may say,
as people always say, that medi-
cine knows no law of race or creed
or prejudice, obviously there are

special differences. Wherever peo-
ple exist, wherever there are dif-
ferent types of belief of thought,
of race, of heredity, of descent,
there are bound to be certain dif-
ferences which will eventually be
recognized in the conduct of our
affairs.

I think of an organization like
Michael Reese Hospital in Chicago,
which grew as it did—and the oth-
er hospitals like it—with their de-
partments for research in the cure
of cancer and other diseases and
the nurses' homes and other de-
partments and units, representing
the desire of some citizen to per-
petuate his name and his family's
name with good will. That same
inspiration is likely to come to
every one of the citizens of Detroit.
I visualize in the years ahead a
complete institution which you
and your community will be proud
of, a real and well-equipped hos-
pital to serve as the animated cen-
ter for every one of the medical
activities of the community.

In Behalf
of Science

4

A hospital today is not
just four walls and a lot
of beds; it is not just a
place to take care of sick
people. It is an intimate
source of scientific ad-
vancement in your com-
munity. The essence of
its functions is not only
the care of the sick, but
the education, of physic-
ians and the numerous
types of technicians who
are now a part of medi-
cine. A community has
to have good hospital ap-
preciation before it gets
the best in hospitals, and
a good organization can
do a great deal of good
in that regard here in
your community.

Detroit Leaders

A

Challenge

.

to

Detroit

In Detroit you have 3.2 hospital
beds per thousand people. They
have that many in exceedingly
poor Iviississippi. The city of De-•
troit, with its income and living
conditions and expenditures for
luxuries, cannot afford to be com-
pared with the states of Mississippi
and Arizona and New Mexico. It
must compare itself, either as a
Jewish community or a general
community, with other latge cities
of equal size and wealth.

Call the Roll.of

Our

Cities

New York, as you know, h a s
many Jewish hospitals, and the
Jewish hospitals in New Orleans,
Pittsburgh, Chicago, Cinci n n a t
Cleveland, Los Angeles, San Fran-
cisco, Milwaukee; Brooklyn and
Baltimore, are old and well known.
St. Louis has just replaced a com-
paratively small hospital by a
larger one, which is undoubtedly
one of the finest hospitals in the
United State s. Similar replace-
ments are going forward at
Newark, New Jersey; Pittsburgh
and Boston. Even many smaller
communities have established hos-
pitals. Philadelphia has two Jewish
hospitals and both are about to be
reconstructed and largely expand-
ed. In New York, numerous Jewish
hospitals are scattered in the three
important boroughs of the city.

The Many Advantages

Another function of
your hospital is research.
SIDNEY J. ALLEN, prominent Detroit indus-
Regardless of what you
trialist who has been active for a number of
might want to do with a
years in community affairs, in Allied Jewish
Jewish hospital in the
Campaigns, Community Fund and the War Chest,
city of Detroit, there is
has been named chairman of the campaign for
no greater satisfaction
the $2,000,000 fund for the establishment of a
Jewish hospital here. Advance gifts committees
that you could come to
are already at work soliciting for this fund un-
in a lifetime of earnest
der Mr. Allen's leadership.
endeavor than to have
contributed and made
possible and kept alive an institu-
tion in which research work plays
such a considerable part and helps
to furnish for the whole world
and all its people an answer to a
great problem.

Every Jewish citizen is born in-
to a group which has a tradition
of giving, a tradition of charity, a
tradition of caring- for the sick, a
tradition of the responsibility of
everyone to each other.

S FAR BACK AS 1926
testimony in behalf of a hospital,
for Detroit was offered by Dr. S.
S. Goldwater, the world-famous
hospital planner and administra-
tor, who wrote as follows to Dr.
Emil Amberg of Detroit:
Detroit is at present the only
city of the first class in the United
States that is without a Jewish
hospital.

In Hospital

Movement

The Jewish Hospital As-
sociation of Detroit has been
incorporated under the chair-
manship of Max Osnos by a
committee of 12 which in-
cludes, in addition to Mr. Os-
nos, t h e following Detroit
leaders:

Sidney J. Allen, Maurice
Aronsson, Irving W. Blum-
berg, Fred M. Butzel, Irwin I.
Cohn, Israel Davidson, Harry
Frank, Leo Siegel, Abraham
Srere, Frank A. Wetsman and
Henry Wineman.

I, personally, have been active in
the planning of Jewish hospitals;
everywhere I have encountered
the greatest enthusiasm for these
projects, and a disposition in each
of the communities to build up an
institution equal to the best in
physical equipment and in medical
and nursing standards. So far as
medical organization is concerned,
it does not take a very long while
to develop an orderly system and
to attract to our staff in the hos-
pital medical talent equal to the
best.
The reasons that you advance in
your letter for the establishment
of a Jewish hospital in Detroit are
the principal ones and are perfect-
ly sound. The advantages to be
derived by the community are un-
deniably many, and I hope that
Detroit will not too long delay ac-
tion which Will place it in line with
the progressive Jewish communi-,
ties of the country generally, for
every year of delay will mean just
so much deprivation to the local
Jewish community.
Eleven years later, Dr. Gold-
water, having retired from his
eminent position as director of Mt.
Sinai Hospital in New York, one
of the greatest institutions of its
kind in the world, and called back
to active communal leadership as
Commissioner of Hospitals in New
York, again, turned to the Detroit
situation. He then wrote:
"Unless there has been some
substantial change in local condi-
tions in Detroit, I should be in-
clined to - repeat almost word for
Word the views that I expressed on
the subject of the desirability of a
Jewish hospital in your great corn-
munity, in my letters of 1926.

The American Hospital
System

"I am a firm believer in the dual
hospital system for great munici-
palities in the United States, i. e.,
I believe that there are advantages
to the community and to the great
classes and groups of which it is
composed in the existence side by
side of municipal hospitals and of
voluntary hospitals dedicated to
_community welfare and free from
many of the inevitable limitations
and handicaps of great public in-
stitutions in the United States.
"The fundamentals of medicine
have not, in my opinion, been
changed during the last ten years
in ways that alter the theoretical
basic forms of Hospital planning
and hospital organization."