Various

“ As the knowledge of hygiene and of the doctrine of cleanliness and purity in regard not only to dwellings and towns, but also in relation to food of all descriptions, including water, became known and appreciated, hospitals were found to be of even greater importance, if that is possible, to the healthy in crowded communities, than to the sick. It took many centuries before sound hygiene really began to occupy the position of importance which it is now known to possess, not only in regard to the treatment and cure of disease, but to its prevention and eradication. ”

“ Nowadays the healthy, whilst they realize that the more efficient they can make the hospital, the more certain, in the human sense, is their own chance of prolonged life and health, are, as the progress of the League of Mercy has shown in recent years, genuinely anxious for the most part to do something as individuals in the days of health in the cause of the sick. Formerly the hospital was merely a building or buildings, very often unsuitable for the purposes to which it was put, where sick and injured people were retained and more frequently than not died. ”

“ Hardy Annuals.—Annual plants are those which grow up from seed, flower, ripen seed, and die in the course of one season—one year. They are useful in the mixed garden, for though in some cases they are of short duration, many of them are possessed of much beauty of hue and elegance of form. Annuals may be divided into three classes: the hardy, which are sown at once in the ground they are to occupy; the half-hardy, which succeed best when aided at first by a slight hot bed, and then transplanted into the open air ”

“ If the factory system were abolished with all its effects the housing question would remain. But there is a more important distinction than extent of application. The requirements of public health are indeterminate and interminable; knowledge increases, or rather changes, and the standard constantly rises. It is the changing standard which gives most trouble; housing at one period thought good enough is presently condemned. Fifty years ago no house existed which would satisfy modern sanitary standards, and the mansions of the great were in some respects inferior to the worst quarters to-day. ”

“ In such a hospital no patient can be overlooked, no wrong or imperfect diagnosis can long remain undiscovered and unrectified, and nowhere else have the patients so continuous a guarantee that the treatment they receive will be of the best, while the provision made for their comfort and welfare, owing to the unceasing and ever varying quality of the criticism to which the work of everybody, from the senior physician to the humblest official, is subjected in a clinical hospital, is unequalled anywhere else. ”

“ We believe that the more thoroughly the advantages and disadvantages of rate-supported and voluntary hospitals for the care of the sick are weighed and considered, and the more accurate and full the knowledge which is added to the judgment upon which a decision can be based, the more certain will it be that every capable administrator will come to the conclusion that on the whole it is good for the sick and for the whole community that these establishments should, at any rate in Great Britain, be maintained upon the voluntary system. ”

“ Such an absence of system throughout the world has everywhere led to overlapping, to the perpetuation of many abuses, to the admission of an increasing number of patients whose social position does not entitle them to claim free medical relief at all, and, often too, to the admission of patients belonging to a humbler grade of society who are already provided for by the rates in institutions which they do not care to enter and who find their way to the wards of hospitals which were established to provide for patients of an entirely different social grade. ”

“ The life of the plant (see Plants) makes itself manifest in the processes of growth, development and reproduction. By growth is here meant mere increase in bulk, and by development the series of gradual modifications by which a plant, originally simple in its structure and conformation, becomes eventually complicated, and endowed with distinct parts or organs. The reproduction of the higher plants takes place either asexually by the formation of buds or organs answering thereto, or sexually by the production of an embryo plant within the seed. ”

“ Most of the improved housing is beyond the means of those who need it most, and they seek other quarters resembling the old ones as nearly as possible. The example of Liverpool, which has the largest proportion of casual and ill-paid labour of all the great towns, and has been the most successful in providing new dwellings of a fair quality, centrally situated and not in blocks, at really low rates, shows that the problem is not insoluble; but as a rule too little attention is paid to the question of rent in housing reform, especially in building undertaken by municipalities. ”

“ The rise and development of sanitation, of house and main drainage and sewage disposal, the purification of water and provision of a constant service in the house, the removal of refuse, the segregation of infectious illness, sanitary inspection—all these, apart from the demolition of the worst housing and the provision of better, have raised the general healthiness of the dwellings of the people. ”

“ Every voluntary hospital, while admitting all accidents and urgent cases needing immediate attention, should institute a system whereby each applicant would be asked to prove that he or she was a fit object of charity. The only real attempt at reform, up to 1909, was the appointment by many of the larger hospitals of almoners to ascertain whether certain selected patients were in a position to pay or not. By putting the burden of proof of eligibility to receive free medical relief upon the patients and their friends, all abuse of every kind must speedily cease. ”

“ History of the Hospital Movement.—We have now to consider the principles upon which the provision of the best form of medical care in hospitals can be secured for all classes of people. Though hospitals cannot be claimed as a direct result of Christianity, no doubt it softened the relations between men, and gradually tended to instil humanitarian views and to make them popular with the civilized peoples of the world. ”

“ In the result, especially as such special departments as there were in connexion with general hospitals were too often starved for want of means and men for their development and improvement, the younger spirits called their friends together and began to start special hospitals. To-day every really efficient clinical general hospital has within its walls special departments of almost every description, which have been made as efficient and up-to-date as money and knowledge can make them. ”

“ Watering.—So far as practical gardening is concerned, feeding by the roots after they have been placed in suitable soil is confined principally to the administration of water and, under certain circumstances, of liquid or chemical manure; and no operations demand more judicious management. The amount of water required, and the times when it should be applied, vary greatly according to the kind of plant and the object for which it is grown, the season, the supply of heat and light, and numerous other conditions, the influence of which is to be learnt by experience only. ”

“ The evils of housing in New York have been the subject of much sensational writing which has elevated them to the position of a world-wide scandal. It is not necessary to accept all the allegations made in order to see that several circumstances have combined to produce an exceptional state of things in this great city. The limited space—the island or peninsula of Manhattan—in which central New York is built has compelled the erection of large tenement blocks, otherwise rare in American towns ”

“ In transplanting smaller subjects, such as plants for the flower garden, much less effort is required. The plant must be lifted with as little injury to its rootlets as possible, and carefully set into the hole, the soil being filled in round it, and carefully pressed close by the hand. For moving small plants the garden trowel is a very convenient tool, but we are inclined to give the preference to the hand-fork. For larger masses, such as strong-growing herbaceous plants, a spade or digging-fork will be requisite and the soil may be trodden down with the feet. ”

“ All seeds require a certain degree of heat to induce germination. For tropical plants the heat of a propagating house—75° to 80°, with a bottom heat of 80° to 90°—is desirable, and in many cases absolutely necessary; for others, such as half-hardy annuals, a mild hot bed, or a temperate pit ranging from 60° to 70°, is convenient; while of course all outdoor crops have to submit to the natural temperature of the season. It is very important that seeds should be sown when the ground is in a good working condition, and not clammy with moisture. ”

“ Hospital Economics.—There is no doubt that the voluntary system of hospital government is far more economical than any system of state or rate-supported hospitals. That the present condition of the voluntary hospitals in regard to economy is all that can be wished is not, of course, true. Still, resting as this system does upon the goodwill of the public for its continuance and maintenance, it is satisfactory to note that there is a continuous improvement in system and method, which makes for economy. ”

“ Artificial heat applied to the roots, called by gardeners “bottom-heat,” is supplied by fermenting materials such as stable manure, leaves, &c., or by hot-water pipes. In winter the temperature of the soil, out of doors, beyond a certain depth is usually higher than that of the atmosphere, so that the roots are in a warmer and more uniform medium than are the upper parts of the plant. Often the escape of heat from the soil is prevented by “mulching,” i.e. by depositing on it a layer of litter, straw, dead leaves and the like. ”

“ Deficiency of light is less injurious than might at first be expected, because the plant to be forced has stored up in its tissues, and available for use, a reserve stock of material formed through the agency of light in former seasons. The intensity of the colour of flowers and the richness of flavour of fruit are, however, deficient where there is feebleness of light. Recent experiments show that the influence of electric light on chlorophyll is similar to that of sunlight, and that deficiencies of natural light may to some extent be made good by its use. ”

“ Hosea could discern no faithful remnant in Ephraim, yet Ephraim in all his corruption is the son of Yahweh, a child nurtured with tender love, a chosen people, whose past history declares in every episode the watchful and patient affection of his father. And that father is God and not man, the Holy One who will not and cannot sacrifice His love even to the justest indignation (chap. xi.) ”

“ Respiration in plants, as in other organisms, is a process that goes on by night as well as by day and consists in plants in the breaking up of the complex carbonaceous substances formed by assimilation into less complex and more transportable substances. This process, which is as yet imperfectly understood, is attended by the consumption of oxygen, the liberation of energy in the form of heat, and the exhalation of carbon dioxide and water vapour. Transpiration is loss of water by the plant by evaporation, chiefly from the minute pores or stomata on the leaves. ”

“ In the simplest instances the pollen of one flower fertilizes the ovules of another on the same plant, owing to the stamens arriving at maturity in any one flower earlier or later than the pistils.
Cross-fertilization must of necessity occur when the flowers are structurally unisexual, as in the hazel, in which the male and female flowers are monoecious, or separate on the same plant, and in the willow, in which they are dioecious, or on different plants. A conspicuous example of a dioecious plant is the common aucuba, of which for years only the female plant was known in Britain. ”

“ Any who expect to get early cabbage, cauliflower, lettuce or radishes, while planting or sowing is delayed until the time of sowing tomato and egg plant in May, are sure to be disappointed of a full crop. Frequent rotation of crops should be practised in the vegetable garden, in order to head off insects and diseases; and also to make the best use of the land. Every three or four years the vegetable garden should be laid out in some new place; but if this cannot be done, the crops should be rotated on different parts of the old garden. ”

“ They embody an aspiration, set an example and exercise an educative influence. But they have nothing to do with the housing of the really poor, which is the great difficulty; and their very attractiveness seems in some danger of drawing attention from it. Garden cities and suburbs will never house the poor or even the bulk of our working class population, and it would be a pity if the somewhat sentimental popularity of romantic schemes led to a distaste for the plodding effort which alone can effect a real cure of deep-seated social evils of long standing. ”

“ By Suckers.—Root suckers are young shoots from the roots of plants, chiefly woody plants, as may often be seen in the case of the elm and the plum. The shoots when used for propagation must be transplanted with all the roots attached to them, care being taken not to injure the parent plant. If they spring from a thick root it is not to be wantonly severed, but the soil should be removed and the sucker taken off by cutting away a clean slice of the root, which will then heal and sustain no harm. ”

“ At a great voluntary hospital, not only do hundreds of medical students and nurses work in the wards, but thousands of people, in the persons of the patients’ friends, and those members of the public who take an interest in hospitals, pass through the wards in the 793 course of every year. Again, each voluntary hospital has to live by competition, a fact which guarantees that everything in the way of new treatment and scientific development shall in due course find its proper place within the walls of such an establishment. ”

“ If the world had to-day to organize the very best system of hospital accommodation which could be evolved, there is no doubt that few or none of the special hospitals would find any place in that system. ”