The increase in private hospital facilities has also been noteworthy.  Among the new institutions doing admirable work should be mentioned the University Hospital, an Episcopal institution; the Mary J. Johnston Hospital, a Methodist institution; and St. Paul’s Hospital, a Catholic institution.  Patients are admitted to all of them without regard to their religious belief, a policy the liberality of which must commend itself to all broadminded persons.

In enumerating the hospitals of Manila, the old Spanish institution, San Juan de Dios, should not be forgotten, for it has been improved and modernized until it offers good facilities for the treatment of the sick and the injured.

All of the above mentioned institutions are in effect acute-case hospitals designed for the treatment of curable ailments.  Cases of dangerous communicable disease are excluded from them, but are adequately provided for at San Lazaro where the insular government has established modern and adequate hospitals for plague, smallpox, cholera, diphtheria, scarlet fever, measles, etc., as well as a detention hospital for lepers, pending their departure for Culion.

An insane hospital capable of comfortably accommodating 300 inmates has also been provided.  A few years since the insane were commonly chained to floors, or tied to stakes under houses or in yards, and were not infrequently burned alive during conflagrations.  Such conditions no longer exist, but the government is not yet able to provide for nearly all of the insane who need institutional care.

The several institutions above mentioned have a very important function apart from the relief of human suffering, in that they afford unexcelled opportunities for giving practical instruction in nursing and in the practice of medicine and surgery.

A few years ago there was not such a thing as a Filipina trained nurse in the islands.  I was firmly convinced that the Filipinas of this country could learn to be good nurses, and made earnest efforts to have included among the first students sent at government expense to the United States several young women of good family who should attend nurses’ training schools and then return to assist in our hospital work.

I failed to secure the adoption of this plan, but later the training of nurses was inaugurated in connection with hospital work at the old Civil Hospital, St. Paul’s, the University Hospital, the Mary J. Johnston Hospital and the Philippine General Hospital.  At the latter institution there is now conducted an admirable school where more than two hundred young men and women are being trained.  Three classes have already graduated from it, and Filipina nurses have long since proved themselves to be exceptionally efficient, capable and faithful.  It will be some time before we can educate as many as are needed in the government hospitals, and after that has been accomplished a vast field opens before others in the provincial towns, where the need of trained assistants in caring for the sick is very great.