Though she was assured that the plant would reopen soon (in fact it soon did), she made little progress. That she was suffering from a psychoneurosis was evident; what remained was to bring about treatment.
This was done by enlisting a development of recent days,--the Social Service agencies. Out of the old-time charity has come a fine successor, social service; out of the amateurish, self-consciously gracious and sweet Lady Bountiful has come the social worker. Unfortunately social service has not yet dropped the name "Charity", perhaps has not been able to do so, largely because the well-to-do from whom the money must come like to think of themselves as charitable, rather than as the beneficiaries of the social system giving to the unfortunates of that system.
Let me say one more word about social service and the social worker, though I feel that a volume of praise would be more fitting. The social worker has become an indispensable part of the hospital organization, an investigator to bring in facts, a social adjuster to bring about cure. For a hospital to be without a social service department is to confess itself behind the times and inefficient.
Briefly, this is what was done for this family.
Their prejudices against social aid were removed by emphasizing that they were not recipients of charity. The husband was allowed to pay, or arrange to pay, for a six weeks' stay in the country for the mother and the new baby. The home for this purpose was found by the agency and was that of a kindly elderly couple who took the woman into their hearts as well as over their threshold. The social worker arranged with a nursing organization to send a worker to the man's house each day to clean up the home while the children stayed in a nursery. One way or another the husband and children were made comfortable, and the wife came back from her stay, made over, eager to get back to her work.
It is obvious that in such a case as this the physician is largely diagnostician and director, the actual treatment consisting in getting a selfish and inert social system to help out one of its victims. That a sick man should be left to sink or swim, though he has previously been industrious and a good member of society, is injustice and social inefficiency. That a woman, under such circumstances, should be left with the entire burden on her hands is part of the stupidity and cruelty of society.