ABSTRACT
With 3,400 beds, the Cook County Hospital was said to be the biggest in the world. Outlying units of Cook County Hospital to serve the medically indigent would attract new groups of physicians. Dr. Morris Fishbein proposed circularizing South Side doctors to discover how many of them would contribute service to a branch hospital. The leaders of the Welfare Council of Metropolitan Chicago had long believed that the overcrowding of the West Side hospital should be relieved by building a large general hospital on the South Side. The Welfare Council and Michael Reese Hospital had been thinking for some time of organizing a "citizen's committee". In Dr. Karl A. Meyer's view, to build and operate a general hospital of good enough quality to attract an able medical staff would cost far more than it would cost to provide equivalent service at the West Side hospital.
