St George's Hospital

“ Women rush out and throw flowers to the wounded men. Sometimes there is a cheer, but usually only silence and words of sympathy.
The King George Hospital was built to be a government printing office, and was nearing completion when the war broke out. It has been made a Paradise for convalescent men. The bareness and the sick suggestion and characteristic smell of the average hospital are unknown here. There are soft lights and comfortable beds and pretty women going about as visitors. The stage beauties and comedians come and entertain us. ”

“ George's Hospital, London, to study medicine. During his residence in London his wide human sympathies found outlet in strenuous work at the Caius College mission in Battersea. A breakdown in health compelled him to go abroad for some time, but after making a complete recovery he returned to his medical studies and qualified M.B., B.C. (Cambridge) in 1900. ”

“ The hospitals are the heavens-upon-earth of the poor. I have heard little children—their poor pinched faces wrinkled with pain—murmur that they didn't mind it, because if they had been well they would never have come to 'the beautiful place.' Beautiful, indeed, by contrast with their wretched homes are the clean wards, the comfortable beds, and the kind faces of the nurses. Step across from the home of a sick child in the slums of the Borough to the Evelina Hospital, and it is like passing from the infernal regions to Paradise. ”

“ George’s Hospital, near Hyde Park Corner. This undertaking was set on foot soon after Michaelmas 1733, by some gentlemen who were before concerned in a charity of the like kind in the lower 13part of Westminster. This house they judged convenient for their purpose, on account of its air, situation, and nearness to town; they therefore procured a lease of it, and opened a subscription for carrying on the charity here, which increased so fast, that on the 19th of October they were formed into a regular society, and actually began to receive patients on the first of January following. ”

“ While one clearing station is filling up and treating the patients, the other will be sending all possible treated cases down the line. From the base hospitals, which are near the sea, the men are forwarded as soon as advisable by hospital ships for distribution among the hospitals of England. ”

“ The hospital, therefore, consisted of six distinct units spread over a five-mile area, and all operated by the same hospital staff. It was very difficult from the standpoint of administration, though it was excellent training for the personnel of the hospital. At the beginning it was difficult to obtain drugs. The transportation of sick men from Pond Farm camp to Netheravon a distance of about 16 miles over very rough roads in rain and cold can be better imagined than described. ”

“ On his arrival in England, whither his fame had preceded him, the University of Oxford confirmed his title, and the College of Physicians received him with applause, as did the Royal Society (then but recently established.) He soon became the leading practitioner of the day, and in course of time Physician to George the Second. For more than half a century he attended at St. Thomas’s Hospital, and is said to have suggested to Guy the foundation of the hospital known by that name. A more noble, disinterested, and generous man than Mead 80never lived. ”

“ The hospital barges make the finest little hospitals that you could desire. They are the ordinary flat-bottomed square-ended Dutch barges, roofed in, and when the interior has been cleared out they form elongated covered floating boxes. Skylights in the roof give a splendid light, and the barges are wide enough to allow of two rows of beds with an aisle down the middle. The medical officer's surgery and bedroom are at one end of the barge, while the nurses' quarters are at the other. ”

“ By these it is directed that “this institution, foundation, and hospital, shall for all time to come, perpetually and unchangeably be called by the name of George Heriot his Hospital,” and that “there shall be one common seal for the said hospital engraven with this device, Sigillum Hospitalis Georgii Heriot, about the circle, and in the middle the pattern of the hospital.”
And “because no body can be well [757, 758] governed without a head, there shall be one of good respect chosen master of the hospital, who shall have power to govern all the scholars and officers;” ”

“ I feel much mortified that this lady, who has come to see the hospital, where we try so hard to have the food nicely prepared, and delicacies provided for the men, can go home and tell that she herself heard one of them say, when his dinner was brought to him, ‘Pitch it out,’ for it was ‘grub not fit for an almshouse.’ You ought to be careful what you say, George, for perhaps you do not know what is the fact, that the testimony of the men, with regard to these things, outweighs tenfold all that the surgeons or the ladies can say. ”

“ George’s Hospital the portions are sent hot and divided from the kitchen.
11. The less any Patient is made into an Orderly by the Surgeon the better. The Nurse should have Regulations to invoke to allow her to do her duty.
11. It should be distinctly settled by whom poulticing, fomenting, and all minor dressings, applying leeches and blisters, and giving enemas, [13] are to be done. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Our hospitals in London are always crowded, the waiting-lists mount up till it seems hopeless to attack them, and all the time it is because we have no base hospital down in the country to which our patients might be sent to recover. I wonder how long it will be before each of the great London hospitals has its own base down in the country, with its own motor ambulances and its own ambulance coaches to carry its patients in comfort by rail to surroundings where they could recover as can never be possible in the middle of the London slums? ”

“ It is a curious reflection that whilst in the present war the base hospital has been given, if anything, an undue importance, in the other war it has been practically neglected. Our great hospitals are almost entirely field hospitals, planted right in the middle of the battle, and there we keep our patients till such time as they are to all intents and purposes cured. A very few convalescent homes will admit cases which still require treatment, but only a very few. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Often, too, these diseases rose to the height of epidemic pestilences, so that patients, however extreme their need, dreaded the very name of hospital, and the most skilful surgeons distrusted their own craft. New hospitals or new wards were built, yet after a very short time the new became as pestiferous as the old; and even scrupulous care in ventilation and housemaids’ cleanliness failed to prevent the devastation. Surgery had enlarged its freedom, but only to find the weight of its new responsibilities more than it could bear. ”

“ Such disadvantages might be entirely removed if parliament would decide to throw open every poor-law infirmary for clinical purposes, and to have connected with each such establishment a responsible visiting medical staff, consisting of the best qualified men to be found in the community which each hospital serves. The old prejudice against hospital treatment has disappeared, for the least intelligent members of the population now understand that, when a citizen is sick, there is no place so good as the wards of a well-administered hospital. ”

“ If the case be a common one, you get so much familiarity with a phenomenon that it will be continually presenting itself. If a rare one, you have seen what you may seldom see again. There is every reason for taking the practice of the hospital exactly as you find it. It represents the diseases of the largest class of mankind—the poor; and, although in some of the details there may be a difference, upon the whole the forms of disease that are the commonest in hospitals are the commonest in the world at large ”

“ The current system of large hospitals is abandoned, as being equivalent to 'warehousing diseases on the largest possible scale;' while special hospitals are deemed unnecessary—'as if the different organs could walk out of the body and present themselves for separate treatment.' Each hospital has an ambulance ready to be sent out to bring any injured persons to the institution; the ambulance drives straight into the hospital, where a bed of the same height on silent wheels receives the patient, and conveys him or her to a ward. ”

“ During its two years of work for the sick and wounded, no military hospital has succeeded in establishing a finer record. To see it is a wonderful experience. The hospital consists of 17 wards, with 578 beds, and is entirely staffed by women—surgeons, doctors, pathologists, oculists, dental surgeons, anæsthetists, dispensers, nurses, orderlies. The only men are the patients.
Sir Alfred Keogh, the Director-General of the Army Medical Service, said, when speaking of it: “The hospital is in every respect a military hospital, differing in no way from any other military hospital in the country. ”

“ Another problem is the question of creating, in connection with General hospitals, wards where patients of this sort may receive at the beginning of their treatment, their preliminary examination, where they may be evacuated home with compensation or without compensation, or evacuated to a prolonged treatment hospital for further care.
It has sometimes been difficult to get enough men, trained personnel, to man these wards. ”

“ A dozen doctors, with each his smattering of patients, can learn and teach but little while they work apart: whereas a regular system of inquiry and record, in action where the sick are brought in in battalions, is the best possible agency. Not only are these objects lost when surgeons are allowed to make the great hospital a mere receptacle for a cluster of small and desultory hospitals, but the advantages of a broad study of diseases and their treatment are lost. ”

“ Nay, even at the least, the alleviation of suffering to those on whom death had already laid his hand has been no small thing; and when we know that of 240,000 out-patients who have received advice and medicines, and 10,400 in-patients whose cases have warranted their admission to the wards, a large number of actual cures have been effected since the establishment of this hospital, we are entitled to regard the institution as one of the most useful that we have ever visited together. ”

“ My Richmond friends never lost sight of me for one day during my service in that city. Nearly every day my little boy was sent for to play among happy children, far away from the impure atmosphere of the hospital, which was soon filled with patients suffering from almost every form of disease.
As the demand for more room became pressing, the three stories of the main building were successively utilized, as well as a large storage-room in the yard. The ground-floor contained the surgeons' and steward's offices, store-rooms, etc., while the second and third formed two immense sick-wards. ”

“ For the great mass of the people, cases of severe illness or injury, or those requiring major surgical operations, can be treated more successfully in well-appointed hospitals than in private houses, and as this is becoming generally understood the old feeling against entering a hospital for treatment is rapidly disappearing. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Others, on the contrary, through the energy of their original promoters and the excellence of the work they have done, have obtained a position of authority and reputation which has had a very important bearing for good upon the development of medical science in the treatment of disease. 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. ”

“ When the centenary of the Hospital was celebrated in 1879, a suggestion was made that an event so interesting in the history of the charity would be most fittingly commemorated by the establishment or a Suburban Hospital, where patients whose diseases are of a chronic character could be treated with advantage to themselves, and with relief to the parent institution, which is always so pressed for room that many patients have to be sent out earlier than the medical officers like. ”