Medicine: At Bellevue

The scene at the admitting ward of New York's Bellevue Hospital is one that haunts prowlers about the city. Mansard windows look down from a great grey building at a quadrangle dismal even in daytime. Four or five ambulances are always in the court; the ambulance surgeons (hospital internes in wrinkled white) fidgeting in and out of the admitting ward.

The ward has the smell of soiled bandages, disinfectants and decay. It was opened in 1869 when New York established the first ambulance service in the U. S....

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