The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, Digital Edition > My Day
My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt

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NEW YORK.—I was very much interested the other day in seeing the extraordinary plant that will serve the Einstein Medical Center here in New York. It is not yet organized to the point of having more than a few patients but it is well on the way.

We visited the ward where a few children are being cared for, and then the psychiatric wards and its outpatient department, which is separate from other patients.

I was interested to learn that there were fewer children in the hospital today than ever before, because children's diseases, which used to put them in hospitals, are becoming more uncommon. And it has been recognized that it is better to keep them out of hospitals, if possible.

I was also told the doctors wished they could say the same thing about psychiatric patients. They would far rather get them much earlier and prevent their ever entering a hospital, but if they have to be admitted for a short time the Einstein Medical Center, will mainly try to decide where the best place can be found to send them. This will be done in an effort that cures may be effected so that the patients will not have to spend the rest of their lives in a hospital.

They will give treatment here, but they hope very much to shorten the period of time that a mental patient is detained in a hospital, rather than to lengthen it.

I am impressed with all the equipment and the planning of a modern hospital. It would seem to me that those trained in these hospitals would have a difficult time working anywhere else. Instruments and the surroundings at the Einstein Medical Center are going to be exceptionally good, and there are not many places in the country where they will be as good for some time.

Since the staff of this hospital is made up of the professors of the Einstein College of Medicine and its students, the staff at the moment is rather larger than the number of patients. The first class has only entered but this will right itself in time, and the plant is one that New York City can be very proud to have.

Looking back on Safety Driving Day (December 1) and its apparent failure, it seems to me that just one day appointed to make people conscious of the hazards of the road is not enough.

It will take much longer and it also will take some work with the makers of automobilies. They constantly advertise greater power under the hood of new cars and this is a temptation, with the new roads that are now being built all over the country, to exceed the speed limit.

I know that speed is never thought to be a serious cause of accidents, but I am quite sure it is one of the most serious. If we could hold down the temptation that a car has for a driver, when the power is very great, we might reduce the number of accidents that are so constantly mounting.

E.R.

(Copyright, 1955, by United Feature Syndicate, Inc.)


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About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, December 8, 1955

Roosevelt, Eleanor, 1884-1962
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Digital edition created by The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project The George Washington University 312 Academic Building 2100 Foxhall Road, NW Washington, DC 20007

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Digital edition published 2008, 2017 by
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Published with permission from the Estate of Anna Eleanor Roosevelt.

MEP edition publlished on June 30, 2008.

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Transcription created from a photocopy of a UFS wire copy of a My Day column instance archived at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library.
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