Blood-Letting

Research, too, is an important function. Every man who has the ill-fortune to collapse with mononucleosis (62 in '51) gets Dr. Andrew Contratto's pamphlet on the disease as part of his Stillman reading-matter. Mono was unknown here until twenty years ago when laboratory blood tests began showing a startling breakdown of white blood corpusles, among other things.

The remarkable recovery time of mono patients (about two weeks, compared to the usual two or three months convalescence) is due to the quick action of University physicians in diagnosing and treating the disease. But speedy recovery is not restricted to mononucleosis. Recent figures show that patients spend an average of 3.7 days in the infirmary where in the 20's the average stay was 6.9 days.

When it comes to tallying up all these functions plus the compulsory physical exams, an employees' clinic, and the added load of making physical reports for graduate school and Fullbright applicants, it is easy to see why Hygiene runs a large yearly deficit.

Other major problems are apparent. There are still no medical or infirmary facilities for women students, and the number of women in the graduate schools has been increasing each year. According to Miss Reta Corbett, Stillman superintendant, two girls did manage to lodge in the infirmary for a night each, but it was only because one whole wing was empty.

The Hygiene building itself is hardly a place for an adequate medical center. It was set up in the shell of the old Spec Club that burned down in 1930. The inside is like a spider-web, with myriads of narrow hallways. Cramped offices lack of storage space, and a tiny den for testing eyes that no self-respecting optometrist would tolerate make life tough for both doctors and patients.

Some years ago the surgeons forced the employees' clinic into a little, shanty next door, but any more expansion on the present site would take out the walls.

Stillman too has its trouble. Miss Corbett and her excellent staff of 15 nurses are making the best of a bad thing. Besides its inconvenient location, the old building has not enough facilities for contagious patients. The private rooms have no running water, and there is, only one toilet a floor. The staff has no access to student's previous records which are in the Hygiene building two miles away, and doors and elevators that won't admit beds are becoming a nuisance.

The situation was worse when Bock took over. In 1935 he pulled down the outside staircase that nurses had to use to get to their apartments on the top floor, and put in an elevator. He installed running water in the wards and lockers for student's clothing, items hitherto unknown. The most important innovation was a 50-bed wing to bring the infirmary's capacity up to 115. The medical set-up now is a paradise compared to what it was at the turn of the century.

Students Dense

Bailey became the University's first full-time doctor just as the situation was beginning to get out of hand in 1897. "The students are densely ignorant not only of the manifestations of disease, but of the means of maintaining health and strength," he said.

He opened an office in Wadsworth House and immediately began to plug for an infirmary. James Stillman of New York was the first to heed Bailey's plea. He came across with $150,000, and Stillman opened in 1902.

But Bailey wanted more. His first attempt to get compulsory health insurance failed because students balked at Stillman's lack of facilities for contagious cases. During the 19th century the only place a man with measles could go was a dank "pest-house" on Soldiers Field. After this went out of business, people with communicable diseases had to pay the exhorbitant prices of local hospitals or endanger their dorm-mates by staying in their rooms.

An additional gift finally got the infirmary a contagious ward, and in 1905 an enlightened administration levied a $4.00 yearly infirmary fee on all students. The fee provided two weeks in Stillman per man.

Having a doctor around was a good thing, and the students knew it. It was not long before the less industrious took advantage of the new set-up, and in Bailey's report of 1903 we find the first mention of a problem that has plagued Hygiene for the last fifty years.