Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 February 1917 — Jasper Co. Has First Hospital Built Under the New Law. [ARTICLE]

Jasper Co. Has First Hospital Built Under the New Law.

In the Indianapolis Nejys issued February 2,*1917, there is an article and a cut of the‘new county hospital at Columbus, Ind. In this article.. Columbus claims to have the first hospital built in the -state of Indiana under the new law. Bartholomew is just a little late, as that honor belongs to Jasper county as will be noted by reading the account of the hospital at that place which we here publish. The Jasper county 'hospital will cost very close to $20,000 when thoroughly equipped. It has fifteen beds. Nine in private rooms and six in two wards. In the basement are the kitchen, dining room, laundrv room, cook’s room, two storage rooms and toilet. On the first floor arc four private room's and a three-bed men’s ward. The superintendent’s office and living rooms, toilets and a supply room. On trie third floor are a three-bed woman’s ward and five private rooms. Tite operating room, the anaethetizing room, supply room and toilets. Trie building is equipped with a first class Otis automatic elevator and with 'a dumb-waiter. Each room is well finished and supplied with buzzers and other modem conveniences. The beat is furnished by the plant that heats the court 'house and this will be a very great saving in the maintenance of trie building. The movement to build the hospital was start®! by Judge C. W. Hanley and a petition asking that the same ae erected was largely signed by the taxpayers of the county. That the institution will be of the greatest usefulness to Jasper countv there can be no doubt. It is not as large nor as well situated as the Bartholomew county ho pital, but in usefulness and in economy of administration, it will be ideal. r _Jasper county hospital was opened for business on Friday, January 19, 1917, and the Bartholomew hospital opened on Tuesday, February 6, 1917. The following is the article taken from the Indianapolis News: Columbus, Ind., Feb. 2. —The new Bartholomew county public hospital, built and equipped at a cost of approximately SIOO,OOO, will be opened in this city next Tuesday. Visiting

physiciansanrt surgeonswho have inspected it declare it to be one of the most modem and best equipped bos-* pitals they ever saw. It is the first to be built in the state under the law giving counties the right to erect pubfic county hospitals on petition of the requisite number of taxpayers. D. H. Bohlen & Son, Indianapolis, architects, executed the plans for the hospital, and it was built by Dunlap & Go., local contractors. The hospital is situated in a tract of virgin timber, just across Hawcreek, which forms the eastern boundary line of this city. A public park, including several acres, is to be contributed to the city by William G. Irwin, local banker and one of the hospital trustees. While the park has no connection with the hospital, the park boundary will touch the hospital grounds. Thus all that part of che city will be beautified. There are five trustees for the hospital. The law does not permit them a penny of salary. , The most interesting featurq in connection with the new hospital is the fact that it really is bililt as a monument to the skill of a Columbus surgeon, Dr. Alfred P. Roope. As far as Dr, Itoope is concerned, a newspaperman wastes his time in trying to get him to talk about himself. One who knows him well says: “In' the first place he does not think it is ethical and in the second place it never seems to occur to him that lie has done anything out of the ordinary. But it happens that some of the people who know of his work are not so tight-lipped and the whole county knows why it so readily agreed to spend the money for a new hospital here. •. , _ “When the fact came out that Dr. Roope believed the county should have a modem hospital, where a wider range of work might be done for the people of the community, thete ( was hardly a dissenting voice. In a day’s time several times the required number of signatures were obtained. 'Bhe cotin.y. council voted an appropriation of SIOO,OOO. “The law provides that no particular physician shall have any more to do with a county hospital than any other physician. It is an institution open to all, and this rule will be strictly adhered to here. It is not Dr. Roope’s hospital, yet in *a sense it is,, because the people would not have thought of it had he not been here. Dr. Roope was a pioneer in Indiana against fee splitting. His work throughout this state has sprear to other states and now it is getting to be an absolute rule that the fee spliter is barred from reputable institutions,”