1924
Visitors at Baby Camp on "Home-Coming Day"
Here are a group of former patients, parents, nurses, babies and friends of the institution attending the eleventh annual homecoming at the Dallas Baby camp Saturday. Miss May Smith, superintendent, occupies the center of the group.

     Hundreds of visitors--children who were once patients, their parents and friends--called at the Dallas Baby camp Saturday in celebration of the eleventh annual home-coming day at the little hospital on Oak Lawn avenue, where 2300 sick babies have been cared for and cured of their ailments.
     Miss May Smith, head of the institution, and her staff of seven nurses were busy from morning until after 7 o'clock in the evening, entertaining the steady stream of those who came to pay tribute to the work the baby hospital is doing.
     A youngster of vie came all the way from Ryan, Ok., to pay his respects to those who once save his life. The first incubator baby ever cared for at the institution, now a healthy boy of seven, was there.
     In spite of great handicaps in equipment, Miss Smith and her staff have conducted an efficient hospital for sick babies under two years of age in their remodeled cottage. Now, they are looking forward to the completion of their new $55,000 building, construction of which, will start shortly, and where they plan on caring for 100 children at a time, instead of thirty, which is all permitted with space now available.

Tells of Difficulties.
     Miss Smith told of the difficulties under which the work has been carried on in the past. The first incubator used at the hospital was devised from an old wash-boiler. Now, there are five up-to-date incubators, the gifts of different friends of the institution.
     Each baby has his own milk and water bottles and his individual thermometer. Sterilization of articles, preparation of food formulas and heating of water for bathing are all done on one stove, and increased equipment for those purposes is one of the things Miss Smith is looking forward to in the new hospital home.
     In spite of the limited quarters, the baby hospital is divided into well arranged wards for the patients and all steps are taken to give each the best of attention.

     Now that Governor Sterling has approved an appropriation of $39,500 for the first unit, the power building of the new Dallas State Hospital, the matter of providing a site for the hospital rests squarely upon the people of city and county.
     It was revealed Saturday that chamber of commerce officials and others interested in the earliest possible establishment of the hospital here expect the County Commissioners Court to submit a bond issue to the voters of the county, probably next summer, to get funds for the site. The statute creating the hospital was amended at the last session of the Legislature to permit this method of raising the necessary money.
     About 500 acres will be required for the hospital site. It is understood that no definite location has been made as yet. Options on several sites will be taken, most probably before the bond issue is submitted, so that the taxpayers will not be held up for the price of the land.
     The initial $39,500 appropriation will not become available until 1932. In dispatches from Austin, it was said that the small appropriation was allowed to continue in the bill as passed by the Legislature "to assure citizens of Dallas that the State is acting in good faith in requesting them to purchase a site."
     The State hospital here will represent a consolidation of the Dallas Psychopathic Hospital, authorized a number of years ago, but never established due to lack of appropriations, and the proposed State Cancer and Pellagra Hospital.