June 9, 2025
RAT BITES CHUNK
FROM NURSE'S NOSE.
WHILE SHE WAS ASLEEP IN THE
GENERAL HOSPITAL.
Discovery Made by Mayor Crittenden
While Making a Tour of In-
spection of Institution
Yesterday Afternoon.
"Think of having to sleep in a place where rats gnaw off the end of your very nose," said Mayor Thomas T. Crittendon, Jr., after having gone through the general hospital yesterday afternoon. "I wouldn't have believed that anybody had to sleep under those conditions if I hadn't seen a nurse at the hospital who was in bed and undergoing treatment for a severe rat bite in her nose. While she was sleeping soundly Saturday night a rat disfigured her face by taking a large chunk of flesh from her nose.
"Such a place as the city hospital, the old one, I mean, is a disgrace to Kansas City. The filth and mean wards should not be tolerated. Think of taking a visitor out to our general hospital. Why, I would be too ashamed to do it. There is no excuse for such conditions as exist at the hospital."
Mayor Crittenden had accepted an invitation from Dr. St. Elmo Sanders, city physician, to make the tour of the hospital and before the party had gone far on their way they met Mr. Charles Shannon and he made the third on the trip of inspection.
The mayor was particularly displeased with the quarters for the nurses at the present hospital. The third floor is set apart for them and it is infested by rats and other vermin to such an extent that a few months ago the board of public works found it necessary to make an appropriation to reimburse the nurses for the loss of shoes, hosiery and underwear which the rats had eaten.
The way in which white and black, male and female patients, are all placed in the same room met with the mayor's disapproval. He had said that conditions in the hospital might be bettered to a great extent, though the building itself was responsible for a certain amount of the disgraceful condition.
If the mayor was bitter in his condemnation of the old hospital he was more than enthusiastic over the new hospital which is almost completed. He called it a building of which the citizens of Kansas City might well be proud, and says he will push as rapidly as possible all details so that the city hospital department shall soon be ho used in a building which can cleanly and adequately take care of patients.
Labels: doctors, general hospital, Mayor Crittenden, nurses, race
