Medicine: Ulcer Clinic

Charles Johnson was under sail in the days of windjammers. Mostly he shipped as a cook, and in the galley learned how to use a knife on raw meat. When one of the crew broke a leg or tore an arm Cook Johnson and the captain used to patch him up. There was generally a “doctor’s book” on board which gave directions. Two years ago senility and a burned leg drove Charles Johnson to New York City’s Home for Dependants on Welfare Island. When they asked him what he could do, he told them of his doctoring days at sea. Therefore he was promptly put in charge of the Home’s ”ulcer clinic,” housed in a filthy, waterfront shack which had once been a morgue.

Last week in Manhattan Tammany’s management of the Home for Dependants was under public investigation by Mayor

LaGuardia’s Fusion Administration and stooped, red-faced Charles Johnson was on the witness stand proudly telling how he had conducted his clinic. Ulcers are of all kinds—cutaneous, varicose, typhoid, syphilitic, cancerous. But they were all ulcers to Charles Johnson who had as many as 33 patients a day. On the great, raw sores, sometimes as big as his hand, Charles Johnson scrubbed silver nitrate “and other stuff.” When he was rushed he was not above using the same swab on several patients. “Sometimes,” he cackled, pulling a jackknife from a soiled pocket. “I had to use this knife.” Investigators squirmed as he told how he had gouged out dead matter from ulcers’ pussy, inflamed centres. His only assistant was one “Pete” who “never helped none because he was too busy drinking alky.” No doctor ever appeared at the Johnson ulcer clinic. Sometimes an attendant strayed in briefly but “they couldn’t stand the sight and used to have to leave. It was pretty bad.” For pay toothless old ”Surgeon” Johnson got four plugs of tobacco per week. Charles Johnson’s tale climaxed four days of testimony which convinced most New Yorkers that the upper end of their Welfare Island was as much a Tammany “cesspool” as the lower, prison end (TIME, Feb. 5). As in most New York graft hunts there was a missing witness—Louis J. McNally. superintendent of the Home, who skipped town when subpoenaed. But his wards, a shuffling line of decrepit old men and women, told all that was needed about Louis J. McNally. By the time most of them reached the Home almost all they cared about was a decent burial. The fear of Potter’s Field, plus some persuasion, readily induced them to make over their savings to the McNallys and others. Last week stout Bridget Wallace found her savings signed away to a McNally son. Did she intend him to have them? “May the Lord have mercy on me!” piped Bridget Wallace, “I should say not. The cheek of ’em!” Cheerful little Pat Kane, “oldest living featherweight in the city.” told how he had tied $3,000 in a bag around his neck, gone out on a spree. Back at the home an attendant gave him a “long, white drink.” When he came to 36 hours later his money was gone. In three more days the attendant was dead and no one ever bothered to look for Pat Kane’s money. In November 1933 Margaret Beecher. relict of a Civil War veteran, transferred her savings of $9,608 to Mrs. McNally. Four days later the McNallys brought her, cut and bruised, to a sanatorium. They said she had been “squeezed” between two automobiles. Two months later Margaret Beecher died of cerebral hemorrhage and pulmonary congestion without ever mentioning her accident. But these were the moneyed few. The rest of the Home’s 2,000 inmates took what they could get, which was mostly kicks and curses. Attendants regularly stole butter and cream from the blind ward. If inmates got sick the overseer of men liked to remark: “Bums that can eat can get out of bed.” Favorite remedy for all ailments was a bromide. Once a night overseer entered a ward at 2 a. m. to find a woman moaning and screaming. An attendant explained: “She had fish for dinner and she’s got indigestion. I gave her a bromide.” Next day the woman died of strangulated hernia. Last week a Wisconsin Legislative committee at Madison was winding up a series of investigations into the conduct of State hospitals for the insane. Samples of testimony offered by inmates, relatives, onetime attendants: ¶ Among attendants at Oshkosh’s hospital, to “neck out” means to rope a wet towel around an inmate’s neck, twist. On Jan. 26 an attendant “necked out” Inmate Oscar Schrader so thoroughly that he died. Five other Oshkosh deaths apparently resulted from brutal treatment. ¶ When Clark Lyman entered Mendota’s hospital on Feb. 14, 1931 he was in good physical condition. Two weeks later he died, officially of bronchial pneumonia. But in the interval his wife and half-brother had seen him bound hand & foot, with two teeth knocked out, a gash over his eye, a lump on his chest and so badly bruised that he “looked like a raw piece of meat all over.”

¶ At Waupun’s hospital when Inmate Thomas Votcas upset his night bucket attendants decided to “housebreak” him. One bound and sat on him while another seized his ears, bumped and rubbed his face in the muck. When his face was bleeding and thoroughly besmirched they tossed him on a cot and went away.