Westminster Hospital

“ The hospital is a very wealthy foundation, and is able to support the strain of its immense expenses without difficulty. The governors have recently erected a row of red-brick flats to the west of the garden, which will further augment the income. The garden is charming with flower-beds and grass plots, while the vine and the ampelopsis climb over the old building. ”

“ Bartholomew's hospital, the total in the three will be 10,617: add to these, the number cured in the hospitals at Hyde-park corner and Westminster, the London Infirmary, the Middlesex, Small-pox, Bethlehem, and other hospitals in London, and they will amount to 15,000 at least. Add to this number the patients cured in the hospitals at Winchester, Bath, Bristol, Newcastle, Shrewsbury, Northampton, Liverpool, and the two hospitals at Exeter; I think there are fourteen of them out of London in different counties ”

“ In 1207 the hospital was destroyed in the fire which devastated the borough of Southwark, but a temporary building was erected on the old site (now occupied by the Bridge House Hotel and the London and Westminster Bank) . Peter de Rupibus, Bishop of Winchester, projected a new hospital on a more suitable site on the east side of the road, and appealed for funds for this purpose by means of a charter of indulgence, 1228: ‘Behold at Southwark an ancient hospital built of old to entertain the poor, has been entirely reduced to cinders and ashes by a lamentable fire ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ There is certainly no city better provided with hospitals than London, nor any city where more money is annually subscribed for their maintenance, nor any where the medical staff are paid so little and do so much. In East London there is the magnificent foundation of the London Hospital, which receives 11,500 in-patients every year, has an endowment of £20,000 a year, and an additional income, from voluntary subscriptions, of £40,000 a year. The story of the Children’s Hospital and its beginnings in the hamlet of Ratcliffe has been already told. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Through the courtesy of one of the largest Boston hospitals, a clinic is held weekly in its Out-Patient Department. The hospital is in no way responsible for the clinic, simply lending the room in which the clinics are held. ”

“ The disadvantages, inseparable from general hospitals, are such as can never be counterpoised by all the regularities of medicine and regimen. Nature and kind nursing save a much greater proportion in our plain way, at a smaller expence, and with less abuse. One branch only of hospital institution is wanting with us; that is, a general establishment for those laboring under difficult cases of chirurgery. The aids of this art are not equivocal. But an able chirurgeon cannot be had in every parish. ”

“ No effort will be spared to render the very best service possible under the circumstances and conditions imposed.
Just what the future will hold for the Public Health Service in this work, it is now impossible to say. It appears, however, that the Public Health Service for sometime to come will be one of the designated agencies for furnishing hospital care and treatment to beneficiaries of the U. S. Veterans’ Bureau. This responsibility of supplying hospital facilities, with all that is implied, will be as adequately met as possible. ”

“ I am as good as a Medical Times! But oh! you Gentlemen of England who sit at Home in all the well-earned satisfaction of your successful cases, can have little Idea from reading the newspapers of the Horror and Misery (in a Military Hospital) of operating upon these dying, exhausted men. A London Hospital is a Garden of Flowers to it.
We have had such a Sea in the Bosphorus, and the Turks, the very men for whom we are fighting, carry in our Wounded so cruelly, that they arrive in a state of Agony. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The chief nurses have stated that the care of the patients means only “more patients.” There is no special problem in dealing with them and under the above conditions, they accept the necessary discipline and restriction which are fundamental if hospital treatment is to succeed.
It would seem, therefore, that the problem, as has already been pointed out, exists chiefly in the U. S. Public Health Hospitals where the greater number of patients from the Veterans’ Bureau are receiving care and treatment. ”

“ The atmosphere of a great city grows less and less suitable to the rapid and complete recovery of patients who may undergo the major operations or be suffering from the severe and acute forms of disease. Asepsis, it is true, has reduced the average residence in hospital from about 35 to less than 20 days. It has thereby added quite one million working days each year to the earning power of the artisan classes in London alone. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Hospitals and infirmaries would be alike nationalised, and, in place of the present antagonism between hospitals and the bulk of the medical profession, every doctor would be in touch with a hospital, thus having behind him a fully equipped and staffed institution for all purposes of diagnosis, consultation, treatment, and research, also serving for a centre of notification, registration, preventive and hygienic measures. ”

“ These Hospitals were freely used by wounded men of all units from the front, and became the radiant centres of a large number of War Hospitals in the county. From the parent institutions in Leeds and Sheffield, Auxiliary Hospitals sprang up throughout the West Riding of Yorkshire, as many as 6,500 beds being affiliated to the 2nd Northern General Hospital alone. From August, 1914, till late in 1919, this splendid work, of which the foundations were laid in peace-time, was in full swing, and should form an important chapter in a complete history of the Territorial Force. ”

“ As a matter of fact, however, we all know that in none of our Veterans’ Hospitals, especially the larger ones of 500 to 1000 or more beds, are all the patients or even a majority of them represented by this type of patients, on the contrary we have a large group of convalescent patients who require professionally very much less attention from the standpoint of active constructive treatment, dietetic attention, etc., and hence require vastly less personnel, and the expense of their maintenance in the hospital will be very greatly reduced from that of the acute type. ”

“ Most people assume that the older generations did not know how to build good hospitals. They did as well as they could, but until the development of modern knowledge of hygiene and sanitation, as well as the demand made on hospital administration by modern surgery, hospitals could scarcely be expected to be anything but the sordid piles of buildings they usually were, thought proper if they but furnished a protection from the weather and sustenance for the sick poor. ”

“ A little farther north, in Castle Street, is the blind asylum. The Western Infirmary is to some extent used for the purposes of clinical instruction in connexion with the university, to which it stands in immediate proximity. Near it is the Royal hospital for sick children. To the south of Queen’s Park is Victoria Infirmary, and close to it the deaf and dumb institution. On the bank of the river, not far from the south-eastern boundary of the city, is the Belvedere hospital for infectious diseases, and at Ruchill, in the north, is another hospital of the same character opened in 1900. ”

“ It is not a city one need hesitate to visit. All the creature comforts may be had. There are good physicians, good hospitals, good schools and the other advantages of populated centres in either the United States or Europe. There are no less than sixteen hospitals in the city, most of which are maintained either by the municipal or federal government. The British Hospital is an admirable institution, and is the one generally patronized by the Americans, for it has a staff of very able physicians. ”

“ 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. ”