(As published in La Provincia)
Yesterday, the Mayor’s Office was informed that a helpless, sick elderly man was in one of the inns of the Placeta. The Mayor arranged for one of the staff physicians to visit him; this was done, and in view of the medical opinion, the said authority gave the order that the old man—who, it appears, was dying of starvation—be moved to the hospital. Conveyed on a stretcher to the said establishment, he was not admitted; the Director and some doctors met, we are informed, and after deliberating—we cannot understand what those deliberations could have been about—the patient was rejected, and the Mayor was notified accordingly.
The hospital, as many of our readers know, is a provincial one; the City Council has no private hospital of its own and pays for the stay of its patients in that one. See, then, the terms of the conflict: a dying old man, without family or acquaintances, in the middle of the street. A charitable asylum that rejects a helpless man at its doors; a mayor who has nowhere to house him, because the resource of taking him to [the Sanctuary of] La Cinta was neither prudent nor humane to employ at those moments. What was to be done?
And through all this, while they deliberated at the hospital, and the Mayor was being formally notified, and the Mayor pondered and took steps to resolve the conflict, the hours passed, and the patient on the stretcher in the hospital vestibule waited for a corner of official charity where he could die in peace. What a spectacle in a Christian and civilised population!
In Huelva, public health is good, very good. Nothing is currently occurring that could be cause for alarm or suspicion on this point. However, this should not be a reason for us to live unprepared and to ignore the advice and prescriptions of hygiene that authorities and corporations, as well as individuals, must observe today more than ever, so that the evil, should it come, finds no place to take root.
Our fellow countrywomen, the Misses Emilia Fernandez Diaz and Maria Vides y Gomez, after some brilliant exercises, have been approved in their studies as telegraphers. We congratulate these young ladies on the new future that presents itself to them due to their studies and industriousness.
The Mayor recalled the generous offer that the Riotinto Company had made to him, placing at the disposal of the municipality the hospital that the said Company possesses in Huelva, with all its staff and service, for the unfortunate event that sad days should fall upon our city; and even though the case in which he found himself was quite foreign to and far removed from what had been proposed, he had no objection to knocking on this door, achieving the desired success and being able, shortly after, to send the Director of the Provincial Hospital an official letter which in summary stated: “The hospitality requested for the poor patient José Prieto having been denied by Your Excellency, in agreement with the physicians, I have had the necessity to request it from the Director of the Rio Tinto Hospital, where the order for his admission has been given.”
Indeed, he is there, perfectly attended by the doctors of the said establishment, our friends Doctors Mackay and Garcia; and if his life is not saved, at least he will die peacefully and with the dignity befitting a human being in a civilised country, and not abandoned in the middle of the street and—to add sarcasm to cruelty—directly in front of a charitable asylum.
