Cemetery is behind the old county home

written about 1881

~This institution is a large, four-story brick structure, including the basement, and is nearly new. Its location is Beekmantown, about five miles from plattsburgh. The county furnishes the medicine and supplies for the sick, and compensates the attending physician at the rate of $175 per annum.
~The hospital accommodations are in rooms set appart in the building for the purpose. The building is heated by steam, and the physician states. there are "registers and windows in every room; the drainage is good; the sewerage is good; the water-closets are emptied every week; no wells on the premises; water comes into the house from springs; the best of water." He adds, "part iron bedsteads, part wood; the first mentioned poor, wood ones good, with tight joints; straw ticks; clothing good; best of bathing arrangements." there is a separate diet kitchen for the sick, regulated by the "keeper's wife." The physician says, the diet for the sick consists of "milk, eggs, rice, toast and proper food, ordered by me." To clean and purify the clothing of recent inmates, there is used "a boiler, carbolic acid and sulphate of iron."
~No record of the hospital patients is kept. The number of deaths during the year ending June 30, 1881, was fourteen, from diseases reported as follows: "Phthisis, four; old age, four; intemperance, one; cancer, one; epilepsy, two; paralysis, one; disease of the heart, one."
~The number of inmates July 1, 1881, in addition to twenty-nine insane, was sixty-five. Of these, six were idiots, and four epileptics. the number of births in the institution during the year was four. The physician classes forty-four of the inmates - twenty-one males and twent-three females - as incapacitated for any kind of labor, two of whom were bed-ridden. Eleven were able to perform a moderate day's labor; the others were capable of rendering partial assistance.