Pity the Patients

The worried New York State Senator from Queens let his beard grow for a day. Governor Thomas E. Dewey got a phone call from a coin booth. A mouse jumped out of a sawdust box. Finally the cleanup of Creedmoor State Hospital for mental patients in Queens, N.Y. got under way.

It was March, and high time--an epidemic of amebic dysentery, a filth-borne disease usually transmitted from excreta to the mouth, had plagued Creedmoor's inmates for three years. Six had died by the end of 1942 without action by the hospital's superintendent, Dr. George W. Mills, or the Department of Mental Hygiene.

State Senator Seymour Halpern heard about the conditions from some Creedmoor workers. He went to see for himself, disguised by a stubble beard and an old coat to gain entrance as an inmate's visitor.

The letter he wrote so appalled Governor Dewey that he immediately phoned Manhattan Lawyer Archie O. Dawson, told him to inspect the hospital. After phoning the Governor from a booth outside the gates, Dawson entered the neat-appearing, modern, $14,000,000 hospital which had 4,580 patients, 713 employes. Findings published last week:

> Since January there had been 85 cases of amebic dysentery (53 active, 32 carriers) among patients and employes, none isolated and 37 of them food handlers.

>"Lavatories used by patients working in the kitchens are not furnished with soap, towels, or even toilet paper. [The lavatories] are in a filthy condition and when cleaned are cleaned by the same persons handling food in the kitchen." In four buildings, 26 toilets were stopped up.

> When Dawson showed Dr. Mills a box of sawdust as a potential nest for mice, a mouse obligingly jumped out to prove him right. He found "mice droppings in and about dishes in the dining rooms."

> "At the farm attached to the institution, milk cans were rinsed out in the employes' lavatory and left standing next to the toilet bowls..."

The State Department of Health promptly cleaned the place up so efficiently that by last week only one active case of amebic dysentery remained.

Good Jobs. The poor state of housekeeping, said Dawson, "resulted from a complete lack of inspection . . . by the Superintendent." Dr. Mills, he said, was "frank, honest and cooperative." But his job had not been very demanding. His salary was $6,000 a year, and "in addition, the State furnishes him a 24-room house which was built by the State at a cost of $66,000 excluding the land. The State furnishes him the services of two maids; in addition, he secures the services of such patients as he desires. . . . The State furnishes him all food for himself and his family, and light and heat for his residence." The Superintendent's house was on a hill commanding a fine view of the hospital half a mile away in the valley below. Dr. Mills admitted that he rarely made a closer inspection of any of the 68 buildings. He applied for retirement.

The Board of Visitors, provided by law as a protection for the inmates, was no protection. Members made no regular inspections. Each month they heard Dr. Mills make a report, signed their names to a blank questionnaire on the condition of the hospital. The 21 doctors on the staff never reported anything amiss. The State Medical Inspector never complained.

Dawson concluded that more than a kitchen cleanup was needed. "These conditions," said he, "were merely a visible symptom of an administrative breakdown." He made a few recommendations: 1) superintendents should be "able hospital administrators" not necessarily experienced in mental hospitals; 2) food should be prepared under a dietitian, not a chef whose only experience has been working in a State mental hospital; 3) injuries to patients should be promptly investigated; 4) new sources of attendants should be found--possibly among conscientious objectors; 5) patients who have escaped and remained at large for one year should not be automatically discharged as at present (one of Creedmoor's dementia praecox patients got a job as a Government employe in Philadelphia). He later added that patients merely senile should not be herded into institutions for the insane.*

Governor Dewey promptly appointed Dawson head of a commission to investigate the rest of New York's 26 mental institutions (pop. 90,000).

* Rate of first admissions to state mental hospitals due to senility increased between 1912 and 1936 from 7.7 to 49 per 100,000 of population over 40 years of age--a rise of more than 500%.

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