Says Sanatorium Neglect Is Responsible for Death. . . Father of Miss Ruth Cain Testifies Before Legislative Committee. . . Other Witnesses Tell of Their Experiences. . . More Testimony of Poor Food, Filth and Neglect of Patients
The direct charge that Miss Ruth Cain, daughter of J.P. Cain, 127 N. Dawson street, died as a result of neglect while she was a patient at the State Sanatorium was brought before the legislative committee investigating Dr. L.B. McBrayer’s conduct of the Sanatorium yesterday morning. Testimony to this effect presented by the father of the young woman, and more testimony of poor food, dirty dishes, lack of attention to the needs of patients, unsatisfactory sanitary conditions, leaky roofs of the men’s shack, made up the morning session of the committee, with counsel for Dr. McBrayer cross examining all witnesses.
Questions of further hearings during the session of the General Assembly, which has now settled into high speed, was discussed by members of the committee yesterday morning but definite decision as to the program to be followed was deferred until Monday morning when, beginning at 9 o’clock, the committee will hold another session. This, in all likelihood, will be the last until the adjournment of the legislature when, by virtue of a resolution introduced for the committee Friday morning defining and enlarging its duties, the inquiry may be taken up again. Report of its findings will be made to the Governor and Council of State.
Miss Ruth Cain, according to the testimony of her father, was a patient at the Sanatorium from November 26, 1921, to January 5, 1922, when she was brought home on account of unsatisfactory treatment she received. She died about a week later. When his daughter left the institution Dr. McCain told him, the witness said, that her lungs were no worse than when she went there but that she had caught cold and pleurisy.
Mr. Cain told the committee of frequent complaints of his daughter in letters home as to food and inattention. He said that he visited the institution and one Sunday dinner consisted of a salad, a piece of chicken and some celery.
“I can’t eat this food and it is always that way,” Miss Cain said, according to the father.
He presented a letter which his daughter had written him and his wife and which, after counsel for Dr. McBrayer had objected to its admissibility as evidence, was allowed to be introduced by the committee “for what it may be worth.”
“This young lady is dead,” said Mr. Hinsdale insisting on the admission of the letter, “and we claim that she is dead by reason of neglect at the Sanatorium. This letter tells how she was neglected and how she [got] pleurisy as a result of it.”
Couldn’t Get Attention
In that letter, Miss Cain stated that she was sick, with “nobody to do anything for her,” that she had called for a doctor at noon but none came until the next afternoon.
“If you are sick in this place you can’t get attention,” she said, describing how some trouble in a toilet made it necessary for patients to go through a long cold and dark hall at night to reach it.
Miss Frances Roule, who was a patient in the institution from July 22 to August 8, 1919, and who left the Sanatorium at that time because of what she declared to be unbearable conditions, stated that she had no complaint to make about the quantity of the food if it had been cooked right and had been clean. Eggs, she said, were frequently sticking to the plate and between the prongs of the fork when a meal was served. She also found chicken feathers in the rice.
“There was nothing that was cooked right,” she said.
Testifying that she was forced to sleep on the infirmary porch, Miss Roule told the committee that though she was at the Sanatorium for 17 days, her bed linen was not changed during this time.
When she announced that she was leaving “because she could not stay there under the conditions that existed,” Dr. McCain told her, she stated, that she would not live six months and if she went home she would be a menace to her family.
Fruit of an inferior character was served the patients, she said, testifying that she was forced to buy such fruit as she ate from a negro employe of the Sanatorium.
She told of another patient, a woman who was very sick and complained of severe pains in the back, who was blistered after having been painted with iodine, and who was running a high fever, railing for ice water which was not available before 10 o’clock in the morning and which was exhausted in the afternoon by failure to replenish the supply of ice.
This patient, the witness said, asked Dr. Reuben McBrayer if he would not do something to relieve the pain.
“I’ll have to paint you again with iodine,” he said.
“No, you won’t. You blistered my back last time.”
“That’s the best I can do,” he answered.
Miss Roule stated that she went to the Sanatorium under arrangements made by her physician and with the understanding that there would be someone at Aberdeen to meet her. She found no one there and talked to Dr. McBrayer over the telephone.
“I’ve got no one to meet you. We don’t meet patients. You’ll have to get here the best way you can,” she quoted him as saying.
Judge Walter Brock, on cross examination, sought to make the witness admit that she had animus against the institution and Dr. McBrayer.
She denied that she had any anger.
“You’ve got a high temper, haven’t you?” he asked.
“That’s what they say about all red-headed people,” she answered. “I think I’ve got a very good disposition,” she answered, “but I don’t like any ‘dragging’!”
Judge Brock desisted.
Mrs. W.T. McGee, mother of Miss Alethea McGee, who testified Thursday that she wouldn’t take a dog to the Sanatorium, yesterday told of visits to the institution to see a friend who was a patient there, described the lack of attention to patients, poor food, and other evidences of mismanagement.
When food was brought to her friend, she stated that the eggs smelled so bad it was necessary to remove them. Another patient across the table, she said, had taken a link of sausage, stuck four tooth picks in it for legs, another for a tail, and had fitted a portion of it for a head.
“That’s what I had for supper but I couldn’t eat it,” she testified the patient said.
Call bells designed for the convenience of the patients in securing attention were out of order and many of them were tied up, completely out of use.
Says Conditions Are Better Now
All of this testimony referred to visits made to the institution prior to the investigation. Last Wednesday, she said, she noticed marked improvement in the conditions and in treatment accorded patients.
On cross examination, Judge Walter Neal asked her the hypothetical question as to what she would say of the treatment accorded her friend if she should learn that his temperature had receded and that he had gained 30 pounds in weight.
She insisted that her experiences with tuberculosis was such that she understood it to be a very easy matter to load flesh on a tubercular with regular hours and regular food.
“Suppose this investigation should disclose that his lungs have improved also?” Judge Neal pressed.
“Well, that would certainly show improvement. Whether it would be lasting or not, that’s another matter,” she answered.
N.V. Stamey, former steward of the institution, told how Louis McBrayer had brought a hog “broken down in the hips” to him for slaughter at the kitchen and for use in the Sanatorium if it were possible. The witness stated that he didn’t know enough about hogs to tell whether or not the animal was deceased. He butchered the hog, though, and found that it was not fit for food and threw it away.
When Dr. McBrayer had company at the institution, special food was ordered from the kitchen, he stated. Sometimes, he said, cold storage eggs were used. Sometimes these smelled very badly. He admitted that he had an arrangement with Dr. McBrayer now whereby when a bakery is installed at the institution he is to become the baker.
W.C. McLeod of Carthage, a printer and ex-service man, testified that food at the institution during the period of his stay there from October 1919 until the following March was “bad as whole.” Dinner dishes, he said, two or three times a week, showed the remains of breakfast. He stated that before he left the institution, his bed became infested with bed bugs. Some of the men in the “men’s shack,” he said, had to move their cots every time it rained to keep from getting wet.
He told of an order given by Dr. McBrayer of a meeting of the patients on one occasion, directing that no patient should to the post office after 9 o’clock in the morning.
“People in the office have other work to do besides looking out for patients,” Dr. McBrayer had said, adding that there had been just one complaint to the post office department about the rule.
“That man had business at home a few days afterwards,” Dr. McBrayer had stated.
On cross examination the witness stated that the mail was delivered daily to the patients.
From the front page of the Raleigh News & Observer, Sunday, Feb. 25, 1923
