London Hospital

“ It was scarcely before the beginning of the eighteenth century that the hospitals of London began to be of any importance in the teaching of medicine. The earliest hospitals in London were leper hospitals, for at one time leprosy abounded in this city. St. James’s Palace is built on the site of a hospital for “maidens that were leprous;” the name Spitalfields reminds us that at one time there was a “spittle” here for lepers. There were other hospitals of a similar kind in Southwark and Kingsland. ”

“ There are one hundred and three hospitals in London in which all the complaints, frailties, and mishaps of poor human nature are supposed to be provided for, and yet it will be much easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, or a rich man to get a free pass into paradise, than that a poor wretch without friends or influence should be able to find a bed in an hospital, unless he can succeed by a miracle in dodging the sentinels which red tape has placed at every entrance to these vaunted institutions. ”

“ This institution at first met with great opposition; but in 1832 its value became widely recognised, owing to the fact that it alone, of all the London hospitals, received cholera patients. In 1843 the hospital was moved into Gray's Inn Road, to a site previously occupied by the light horse volunteers of the city of London, a site which was afterwards purchased by the beneficence of wealthy friends, and upon it was built the Royal Free Hospital, Dr. Marsden becoming its senior surgeon. ”

“ Hyde-park hospital was founded in 1733.
"The London hospitals are so many and large, and under such prudent management, that scarce any persons are so destitute of friends, but they can procure admittance into one or other of them. ”

“ Any Holborn bus will take you to the corner of St. Sepulchre’s where the dismal bell tolled the passing to Newgate of the condemned criminals. On the right side of Giltspur Street is St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, that survived the Great Fire only to be rebuilt in 1730. The history of this great London hospital goes back eight hundred years, for it belonged to the Priory, but Sir Thomas Gresham’s father persuaded Henry VIII. to refound the institution in 1546. ”

“ In every Hospital a thorough cleaning of the wards is essential. In three of the great London Hospitals this is done every year, in one every three years. Nuisance as it is, for the time being, it is such a complete purification of places which want purifying, that having it done every year is preferable to every three years. For the same reasons bare white walls, whitewashed every year, and oftener if there has been some sudden outburst of any zymotic disease or Hospital gangrene are preferable to all colour. ”

“ Middlesex Hospital, for the reception of the sick and the lame, and for lying-in married women, in Marybon Fields near Oxford road. This is a neat, plain, and not inelegant brick building: it has the decent appearance and all the accommodations one would wish in a house devoted to charity, without that ostentatious magnificence which too often in a great measure defeats the humane and noble end of such pious and charitable institutions, where those sums are squandered away in useless decorations, that ought to be employed in administering health to the sick, and giving feet to the lame. ”

“ The poorest man brought to the hospital is treated with the same care, the same science, the same luxuries as the richest.
Look, however, at the hospital as founded by Rahere.
There is a great hall with a chapel at one end: at which mass is daily sung. The room is narrow and lofty, lit by Norman windows, two or three on a side: there is a lanthorn in the roof: under the lanthorn a fire is burning every day, the smoke rising to the roof: the hall is dark and ill ventilated, the air foul and heavy with the breath of sixty or seventy sick men lying in beds arranged in rows along the wall. ”

“ Bartholomew's Hospital, founded by a Catholic monk, in the hoary past, is the oldest and largest hospital in London, as its students are the wildest and most reckless in the metropolis. The number of in-door patients is 7,000; out-door, 100,000, annually, and the yearly income is £32,000. There are 700 beds, 36 professors, and 500 students. ”

“ Thomas' Hospitals, now in process of construction at the Surrey Side of the Thames, in Lambeth, opposite the Houses of Parliament, will combine a number of hospitals for Special Diseases, and will accommodate about 2,000 patients, with as many beds, and will have an income of £50,000 a year, or more.
It is impossible to think of any disease, complaint, deformity, or injury to any member or organ of the body, which has not its special hospital or institution for relief or cure, in the English metropolis. ”

“ Gladstone has for nearly a quarter of a century gone down to the London Hospital every Monday morning, to examine into the circumstances of those who apply to go down to Woodsford. The clergy and ministers of all denominations in the parishes around the London Hospital have a right to send their sick poor with a note of recommendation, but those who are recovering in the London Hospital have the special claim. ”

“ He held minor hospital appointments until in 1859 he obtained a post as assistant surgeon at the London Hospital. Here, as well as at the Metropolitan Free Hospital and the special hospitals on the surgical staff of which he served (the Royal London Ophthalmic Hospital, the Blackfriars Hospital for Skin Diseases, and the Royal Lock Hospital) , the greater part of his life's work was carried out. In 1862 he obtained the fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons, and in that year he was appointed lecturer on surgery at the London Hospital ”

“ At the commencement of the last century it was rebuilt by public subscription, three wards being erected at the cost of Thomas Frederick, and three by Guy, the founder of Guy's Hospital.
The first place of precedency amongst the London Hospitals is contended for by St. Bartholomew's and Guy's. They are both alike important by their wealth, the number of patients entertained within their walls, and the celebrity of the surgeons and physicians with whom their schools have enriched the medical profession ”

“ One hears of it vaguely as an orphan asylum where the children wear quaint costumes that may be seen at the service in the chapel on Sunday mornings, when the singing attracts many visitors.
But there are more reasons than that to take you to this corner off the beaten track of the West End. For one thing, it may not be there very long. Already there are rumours that the Foundling Hospital may be moved to the country and one more link with eighteenth-century London be snapped.
Institutions as a rule are about as dull to see as to live in, but the Foundling Hospital is an exception. ”

“ Floors.—In building a new Hospital or laying a new floor we shall hope to see, by degrees, everywhere introduced the only safe Hospital floor. In the expense the difference between oak and the best white deal ought never to be considered. The staircases and passages should always be of stone. When once an oak floor is well done with bees’-wax it is no longer an absorbing surface. There cannot be a doubt that the frequent washing of the floors, in London Hospitals, is one main cause of Erysipelas and Hospital Gangrene. ”

“ Those who know the magnificent laboratories and lecture-rooms which have grown up in connection with the larger London hospitals must have difficulty in realising the humble arrangements for teaching students in the early forties. What endowments there were—and Charing Cross was never a richly endowed hospital—were devoted entirely to the hospital as opposed to the teaching school. ”

“ The patients, being admitted without any expence, are required to be constant in their attendance on the Physicians, or Surgeons, at the hospital, before eleven o’clock; and, at nine o’clock, to return thanks at the chapel, and at the weekly committee next after their cure; and those only who attend their cure, and return thanks, will receive a certificate thereof, which will entitle them to future relief. The Account published by order of the Governors in 1759.
London Lying in Hospital, at Shaftesbury house, on the east side of Aldersgate street ”

“ It will not do to charge a Nurse, with seventy-two patients on three different floors, with serving each man his portion of diet; the diets of two wards would get cold while she was serving the first. It will be better to make the Ward-Master of Pavilion wards responsible for the serving the diets. There must, of course, be a card at each bed, or some other record, showing the diet the man is ordered. The Nurse must know at a moment’s glance what each patient is ordered.
The largest London wards are the two male accident wards in the London Hospital. ”

“ There are two houses belonging to this hospital, the one in Kent Street, called the Lock, and the other at Kingsland, whither such unfortunate people as are afflicted with the French disease are sent and taken care of, that they may not prove offensive to the rest; for surely more miserable objects never were beheld, many of them having their noses and great part of their faces eaten off, and become so noisome frequently, that their stench cannot be borne, their very bones rotting while they remain alive. ”

“ The Third London hospital at Wandsworth Common is a military hospital; and although the [230] discipline is strict, everything possible is done for the comfort of the patients. Concerts are given every few evenings; almost every afternoon people send around automobiles to take the wounded men for a drive. Twice a week visitors come in for three hours in the afternoon. ”

“ The people's playground is fitly consummated by the {252} people's hospital. That the City of London Hospital for Diseases of the Chest, Victoria Park, might well be called "the people's," is shown, not because it is supported by state aid or by charitable endowment, on the contrary, it depends entirely on those voluntary contributions and subscriptions which have hitherto enabled it successfully to carry on a noble work, but yet have only just sufficed to supply its needs, "from hand to mouth." Yet it is essentially devoted to patients who belong to the working population. ”

“ This hospital enjoys a fine situation, and has all the benefit of a clear and pure air: it has the advantage of being a very neat, though not an expensive building; and though it is extremely plain, it is not void of ornament. It has two small wings, and a large front, with only one door, which is in the middle, and to which there is an ascent by a few steps. On the top of this part of the building is a pediment raised above the rest of the edifice, and under this ornament is a stone with an inscription, expressing the noble use to which this structure is applied. ”

“ Before the fund existed there was no regular systematic inspection of the London hospitals, which in consequence presented very varying degrees of efficiency, some institutions being admirably conducted, while in others the funds were to a greater or less extent frittered away owing to the lack of good business management. It never occurred to the great majority of business men to associate themselves in the practical work of hospital administration, though they subscribed most generously to the hospital funds. ”

“ One may compare their lot with that of more sophisticated children in the London slums, for whom it is necessary to have a society for their protection from the parents who have ill-treated over 100,000 in England in the last year.
One does not ordinarily associate a foundling hospital with the fine arts, but, as I said before, this is an exception. Hogarth not only painted the founder’s portrait and one or two other pictures that he gave to the hospital, but he persuaded his friends to do likewise. ”

“ As matters stand, however, the special hospital has had to be accepted, and nothing which King Edward’s Hospital Fund has done in London has met with greater popularity and professional approval than the labours which its council have undertaken in promoting the amalgamation of the smaller special hospitals of certain kinds, so as to secure the provision of one really efficient special hospital for each speciality. ”

“ The great advantage of this seems to be, that the Nurse’s time is set free from a good deal of arithmetic and some writing; also that each man’s portion is served him hot from the kitchen, not cut up laboriously by the Nurse. In most Hospitals the Nurse cuts and divides the diets; in the London Hospital she moreover weighs them. All this takes a great deal of time. If the patients can get the divided portions hot from the kitchen, it is far preferable. ”

“ The annual income of this hospital is about £25,000 a year, with 100 beds, including about a dozen at Highgate and Margate, the latter for those children who require sea air. It has about 600 in-door and 12,000 out-door patients, annually.
A sick child among the rich has, at least, solace in its sickness, besides every chance for its recovery that money can supply. A sick child among the poor may have attendance or not, as the case may be, but its father and its mother in London have but little time to bestow upon its sufferings. ”

“ It was originally one of three royal hospitals in the city of London, founded by Edward VI., who is said to have been inspired by a sermon of Bishop Ridley on charity. Christ’s hospital was specially devoted to fatherless and motherless children. The buildings of the monastery of Grey Friars, Newgate Street, were appropriated to it; liberal public subscription added to the king’s grant endowed it richly; and the mayor, commonalty and citizens of London were nominated its governors in its charter of 1553. ”