One of the most disgusting and deplorable influences in hospital life, especially in its inhuman effects on the white nurses, is the presence of foul, loathsome, degraded and brutal negro patients, the lowest of the low—the most detestable of all created beings.
The great majority of these animals when brought into the hospitals have not had a bath for months, or even years, and it is frequently found necessary to use powerful antiseptics, in addition to the ordinary cleansing substances, in order to remove the accumulated filth and destroy the innumerable vermin which inhabit their foul bodies.
Now, when we consider the fact the work of giving baths and administering seminal massage must be done by the white nurses, who are called upon to work in the negro wards, as well as in the white wards, the mere thought of such a thing becomes absolutely abhorrent.
Nursing is, without doubt, the highest and noblest profession or business a woman can engage in, and it is positively necessary that such training be acquired in a hospital, but the fact that white ladies are compelled to give treatment and baths to such things as colored patients is one of the most despicably blots on American civilization, and a disgrace to the present regimen of our hospitals.
Ninety-nine and nine-tenths per cent, of negroes treated in our hospitals are not worth saving, and when their worthless lives are saved to what purpose is it?
At some future time the male negroes will commit assaults on our white women while the females will sit in white people's laps in street cars, as has occurred in numerous cases, for the "savage brute" that is in them is bound to manifest itself sooner or later.
After a negro has once been waited on by a white person, especially in the performance of such menial, lowly and servile tasks as nurses must perform in all cases of negro patients, the blacks more than ever feel assured that they are the equals or even the superiors of the white people, and there is nothing that so tends to promote the idea of social equality in their infantile brains.
As Mr. Marbury said in his speech at Edison, "it causes them to assume an attitude of haughtiness, make them offensive, self-assertive and often arrogant towards the white race."
It is so frequently referred to in such cases openly by the blacks as "poor white trash."
I have heard negroes who have been in hospitals openly boast that they were waited on and given baths by pretty, aristocratic young white girls, and they seemed to think that this gave them a sort of social prestige and superiority.
The fact that they will be obliged to work in negro wards is what keeps thousands of fine, educated and in every way desirable white girls from entering our hospitals as nurses, and thus their superior services are entirely lost to the hospitals.
In every case negroes are treated free of all charge, for in 40 years' experience as physician I have yet to see even one colored pay patient.
Hezakya Newz & Films
(1909) White Nurses And Black Patients
GALEN AECULAPIUS HIPPOCRATES.
The Sun
Baltimore, Md..
07 Oct 1909
One of the most disgusting and deplorable influences in hospital life, especially in its inhuman effects on the white nurses, is the presence of foul, loathsome, degraded and brutal negro patients, the lowest of the low—the most detestable of all created beings.
The great majority of these animals when brought into the hospitals have not had a bath for months, or even years, and it is frequently found necessary to use powerful antiseptics, in addition to the ordinary cleansing substances, in order to remove the accumulated filth and destroy the innumerable vermin which inhabit their foul bodies.
Now, when we consider the fact the work of giving baths and administering seminal massage must be done by the white nurses, who are called upon to work in the negro wards, as well as in the white wards, the mere thought of such a thing becomes absolutely abhorrent.
Nursing is, without doubt, the highest and noblest profession or business a woman can engage in, and it is positively necessary that such training be acquired in a hospital, but the fact that white ladies are compelled to give treatment and baths to such things as colored patients is one of the most despicably blots on American civilization, and a disgrace to the present regimen of our hospitals.
Ninety-nine and nine-tenths per cent, of negroes treated in our hospitals are not worth saving, and when their worthless lives are saved to what purpose is it?
At some future time the male negroes will commit assaults on our white women while the females will sit in white people's laps in street cars, as has occurred in numerous cases, for the "savage brute" that is in them is bound to manifest itself sooner or later.
After a negro has once been waited on by a white person, especially in the performance of such menial, lowly and servile tasks as nurses must perform in all cases of negro patients, the blacks more than ever feel assured that they are the equals or even the superiors of the white people, and there is nothing that so tends to promote the idea of social equality in their infantile brains.
As Mr. Marbury said in his speech at Edison, "it causes them to assume an attitude of haughtiness, make them offensive, self-assertive and often arrogant towards the white race."
It is so frequently referred to in such cases openly by the blacks as "poor white trash."
I have heard negroes who have been in hospitals openly boast that they were waited on and given baths by pretty, aristocratic young white girls, and they seemed to think that this gave them a sort of social prestige and superiority.
The fact that they will be obliged to work in negro wards is what keeps thousands of fine, educated and in every way desirable white girls from entering our hospitals as nurses, and thus their superior services are entirely lost to the hospitals.
In every case negroes are treated free of all charge, for in 40 years' experience as physician I have yet to see even one colored pay patient.
GALEN AESCULAPIUS HIPPOCRATES, M. D.
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