Excellent Condition of the Institution — Good Management

The city hospital of Knoxville is a credit to her.  The many unfortunates who find a quiet, cheerful home there when sick can best speak its praise.  It often happens that some one seriously ill or wounded is without a home, and, in many cases, would die but for the care which he receives in this home.   The reporter says “home,” because, under the present management, the hospital deserves the name.

The city hospital has recently received more care than usual.  The authorities have had the building nicely re-painted and renewed inside and out.  The hospital is under the personal management of Mrs. Irene Pollard, and she certainly deserves praise for the excellent condition it is in.  The floors are clean and bright, the furniture in the same condition, and the bed clothes as white as soap and water can make them.  In fact the wards are as tidy as one could wish to see.  The matron gives her personal attention to everything, and fortunate is the poor sick one who finds a lodging here.

There are at present six patients in the hospital, five males and one female.  Three are white and two are colored.  During the municipal year which will close next Saturday there have been eighty-nine patients in the hospital.  Of this number there were eleven deaths, nine males and two females, seven colored and four white.  One died from morphine poison, two of malarial fever, one of dropsy, two of consumption, two from railroad injury, one from heart disease, one from catarrh, and one no cause assigned.  During the year previous there were sixty persons admitted to the hospital and there were thirteen deaths.  The year closing has seen twenty-nine more inmates, with two less deaths.  During the past year the expenses incurred were about $500 less than in the previous year.

This institution will appeal to the heart of every one who will visit it and see how well it is conducted and how much good is done.  A gentleman in speaking of the hospital says that it is an honor to the humanity of our city.  He says, too, that the matron in charge should have better wages than twenty-five dollars a month.  He says that she is a graduate from one of the best schools in the country for training nurses, and that she has the highest endorsements as a nurse from physicians well known to our people.  He credits her with the well ordered condition of the hospital and says that she is an educated and worthy woman.  He says she is a born nurse and that she takes personal interest in the hospital, which is worthy of recognition.

Source:  Knoxville Daily Journal and Tribune, January 19, 1890, page 7.