A County With No Hospital Turns a Private Home Into One
When the injured and dying were thrown on San Juan County's mercy, the new Overseer of the Poor had nowhere to put them but his own house.
Mr. A. H. Rader, who was recently appointed Overseer of the County Poor, has been in a peck of trouble last week, owing to the inadequacy of the facilities for caring for the sick and indigent, who, owing to lack of means, were thrown upon the county. He was forced to turn his private residence into a county hospital.
The first patient was Mr. Maile, whose unfortunate accident has excited the sympathy of the county for the last two weeks. He was brought here from the scene of the accident on the 23d of last month and put under the care of Mrs. Jas. Ross, in the San Juan Hotel. On the 6th of the present month, after Mr. Rader had received his appointment, the sick man was transferred to his (Mr. Rader's) house and formally placed under the care of Dr. E. R. Hunlock, the resident physician of Friday Harbor and coroner of San Juan county.
The case was a very complicated and delicate one owing to the fact that the patient had enervated his constitution to an exceeding degree by former excesses. It was found that the injury caused by the burn was so great that it would be necessary to amputate the limb in order to give Maile a chance for his life. Dr. Hunlock accordingly undertook the operation and with the assistance of Dr. Emery, of Roche Harbor, it was successfully performed last Friday afternoon. His arteries were found to be so attenuated and burnt out that a hemorrhage was deemed by the physician extremely probable and he had to exercise extreme care on that account. Up to the present time Mr. Maile has been doing very well and it is hoped that he will pull through if no change for the worse occurs.
On the fourth instant Isidor Escabedo, a native of the Manilla Islands, who has been a resident of this county ten or fifteen years, was brought in to Mr. Rader's house. He was suffering from chronic Bright's disease, and was in the last stages. He was in a state of dementia and has required constant care and watching to prevent him from injuring himself. He died this morning at 2 a.m.
“He was forced to turn his private residence into a county hospital.”
San Juan County in 1891 had no public hospital at all — the poor and injured were boarded out to whoever would take them, and the new overseer simply opened his own front door. The improvised ward, the emergency amputation, and the death of a longtime island resident in a borrowed bed all point to the same gap: rural health care as charity rather than infrastructure. The debate over what a small county owes its sickest residents is still being had at every hospital-district levy.
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