Life — November 17, 1927 — page 22: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

“While there is Li 90, 2350 there’s Hope” Published by LIFE PUBI, HIN COMPANY 598 Madison Avenue, New York Cuantes Dawa Ginson, President R. E. Surawooo, Editor BP. D. Casey, Art Editor TPH EE Monday morning papers that give a page to reports of what the ministers said the day before are Imost always in- teresting on that page. For example, they reported on the last Monday in October that our lively though some- what bituminous Brother Straton, of the big Baptist Church on West 57th Street, had concluded service the night before by an hour devoted to healing by the laying on of hands. The healing was done by a lay brother who had himself been cured of something by this means and in that church. The results, as re- ported, of the treatments were good. Some people were helped by them, There is nothing unusual now ys about this and kindred methods alleviating They are res through all lesiastical, disease. going on in many pl sorts of agencies, but irregular, and secular. The gre: Christian Science organization de presumably in spiritual cures, but it has no monopoly of them. has any monopoly of them. Reports of them read a good deal like patent medicine reports but the cures do seem to happen and are worth notice No one and observation, The more so be cheap! A Atlantic ab the United it is about one-third of the cost of running the Government. It certainly is very formidable. The standard of medical are is constantly rising and so is the expense of it. In the papers at this writing is a picture of the proposed plan of the New York Hospital and Cornell Medical College. It is a cause they are writer in the October it the cost of illness in ates says Crain Maxw Laxcnuonxe Ginsox, Secretary and Treasurer Vice-President handsome picture and should be, for the building, over by the East River, is to cost eleven million dollars. An- other vast hospital aggregation, as will be recalled, has been erected uptown at 168th Street. It is very, very big and was very expensive. An organ of the State Charities Aid As- sociation has a picture of a new State Psychiatric Hospital which is build- ing for the State of New York as part of this imposing Medical Center. Very handsome, very big indeed, with ‘tall towers; necessary undoubtedly, useful of course, called for by the Governor, who does not call for expenditures without due consideration, to be paid for in due time by the taxpayers. HI a period of construction. It was never so dear as now and there was never so much of it. If this matter of hospital construction was going to settle anything, if we were putting up hospitals enough for everybody, which would continue to handle the job for a gene two, that would be one thing, but more likely they will be swamped in four or five yes patients. be as. ste tion or s by increase of Hospital building seems to dy and continuous an ex- penditure as that for cemeteries. Here is a matter about which it would be nice to be instructed where we get off. How much is life worth in dollars and can we afford the present rates? In so far as spirit can be made to cure the body and save us hospital expenses, by all means let us get it done. The present idea is that hospital charges shall be related to the income of the patient, that the poor shall pay very little and the rich a great deal. That is done and sometimes overdone and usually works pretty well, but for the people who are neither rich nor poor but are used to pay for what they get, a considerable alleviated by contemporary skill with all the modern improvements may be a crushing financial calamity. The suggestion that what rich people pay for hospital experiences shall be deducted from their income tax as money spent for charity has really a good deal to recommend it. illness = — T was in the paper the other day that, Wayne Wheeler being dead and the terror diminished, the Gov- ernment had given 1,300 odd cases of champagne and substantial quanti- ties of other stimulants to the Army hospitals. That is a step in the right direction. All the captured rum that is fit to drink ought to be givey to the hospitals. Maybe they would credit some of it on the patients’ bills. But it is not at all that the hospitals are extortionate nor the best of the doctors greedy. What confronts us is a situation, Can our present economic system carry the present cost of health? B TWEEN the cost of health, the cost of motor cars, and of chew- ing gum, and of cosmetics, and of -s, and of bootleggers’ sup- s, the cost of the necessaries of life seems to be running quite a lively race with the national income g etting very dear and under close to deter- mine whether it is worth its price. Brother Brisbane, in speaking of the prices paid by book collectors for their treasures, says, what would this or that library give for the books of Voltaire, bought, the whole lot of them, by Catherine Second of Rus- sia, moved from Ferney to St. Peters- burg and now in the keeping of the Soviet Government, books many of them with copious marginal notes in Joltaire’s handwriting? They would bring a good price in the current market, of course, but public libraries and college libraries must have other uses for money than to spend it on collectors’ hobbies. E. S. Martin. comicbooks.com