Collapsible Hospital

Something new in medicine, a 350-bed aluminum traveling hospital that can move to the scene of a battle, catastrophe or epidemic, was shown last month to correspondents by the ingenious and industrious Germans. The place of the demonstration was in Ebenrode, East Prussia, but the hospital was already well traveled, had done duty in Occupied France and Poland. Last week descriptions of the hospital reached the U.S.

The hospital, which consists of 32 small collapsible buildings, can be unpacked and set up in 24 hours. The buildings are jointed and grooved; once they are unfolded and set up require only tightening of a few stout bolts. Each unit is raised "bout a foot and a half off the ground on four zigzag iron legs which stretch like automobile jacks. Windows made of Plexiglas, run head-high around each building, are hinged so they can be pushed out from the bottom. Floors are made of composition rubber, and through the center of the peaked ceilings run electric tubes for illumination.

When it settles down, the hospital can hook up with a local electric system but it carries its own generating plant. It also carries a reservoir of 1,000 quarts of water. All the buildings contain portable hot-water radiators run by electricity, as well as small electric stoves. When time comes to move, everything folds up: the 350 iron cots with rope bottoms, the well-equipped doctors' offices, the dentist's office, the operating room, with its sterilization units, operating tables, instrument cases. Like a circus on the march, the hospital rolls off down the highway with its staff of 60 nurses, eleven doctors, one dentist, two druggists, 95 general workers.

So far the traveling hospital has treated over 2,000 patients.

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