Emergency room

“ The best emergency hospital is the tent hospital, where the patient may obtain fresh air for twenty-four hours and receive sunlight by being hauled out into the company streets during the day. Wooden shacks or lean-tos (like those used in T. B. treatment) , the walls of which may be raised by hinges and pulleys to admit the air and sunlight, are excellent. Buildings without balconies or porches should not be used unless there is adequate room or window space. Open air schools are almost ideal; next to them are modern high schools with large grounds about them. ”

“ The military base and line hospitals, as well as the Red Cross institutions, are fully occupied with the constantly flowing stream of emergency cases that pour back from the front. There is no room for the convalescent anywhere. ”

“ And so God is asking us today to remember that miracle of that baby. And He is asking us to take that bullet out once more.
If we have more black men in prison than are in our colleges and universities, then it's time to take the bullet out. If we have millions of people going to the emergency room for treatable illnesses like asthma; ”

“ The ambulance whirled under the hooded carriage-entrance of the hospital, and instantly he was reduced to a zero in the nightmare succession of cork-floored halls, endless doors open on old women sitting up in bed, an elevator, the anesthetizing room, a young interne contemptuous of husbands. He was permitted to kiss his wife; he saw a thin dark nurse fit the cone over her mouth and nose ”

“ The sick are brought from the ships to the hospital by water, and go, or are carried up a wide stone stair to the receiving office. They are then stripped and bathed in the hospital to which they are sent, and their clothes are marked, and kept in a particular magazine. An iron crane is employed to land those who are badly wounded. In all the wards, as well as in the different store-rooms, and the apothecary room, the greatest order and cleanliness is observable.
The church does not appear to me to be arranged in correspondence with the rest of the establishment. ”

“ One hospital alone has a capacity for 20,000 beds. At an emergency call, the hospitals can handle twenty per cent. of the whole Amexforce. To begin with the trenches, the Medical Department has introduced a sort of folding litter that can go around corners without having to make a man who's hit get out and walk around the bends. When he gets to the dressing station or collecting hospital, motor ambulances are ready to take him back to the evacuating hospital, where the women nurses take their chances with the men, eight to ten miles behind the line. ”

“ The C.C.S., usually in huts or tents, is the first real hospital behind the firing zone. It may have accommodation for a couple of hundred patients; is supplied with X-Ray equipment, a well-arranged operating room with expert surgical assistance, and is the nearest place to the line that trained nurses are sent. Here for the first time since he left the line the patient gets all those little motherly attentions that only a woman can give. The injured man may be kept here days, weeks, or even months if he happens to be a case that would be endangered by moving. ”

“ On the following day, the 6th of November, the hospital was ready for occupation; the plumber and gas-fitter were ejected, the pantry became an operating theatre, the greenhouse was converted into a linen room and packstore. In the evening the ambulances met the trains, and the large ward on the ground floor filled up. Before very long all the beds were occupied, and the Chief Surgeon and her two assistants were kept busy with severe cases and heavy surgery. The pressure of work continued until January; and both doctors and nurses had their hands full. ”

“ Yet, although we "nose" the murderers, in the musty, unaired, unsunned room, the scarlet fever which is behind the door, or the fever and hospital gangrene which are stalking among the crowded beds of a hospital ward, we say, "It's all right."
With a proper supply of windows, and a proper supply of fuel in open fire-places, fresh air is comparatively easy to secure when your patient or patients are in bed. Never be afraid of open windows then. People don't catch cold in bed. ”

“ After first aid has been administered, and when there are enough for a load, or there is a serious case, the car goes to the triage, stopping at the relay station, from which a car is sent to the poste to replace the first, which returns to the relay station directly from the hospital.
The hospitals also are divided into two main classes, the triages, or front hospitals in the zone of fire, and the H.O.E.’s, hospitals of evacuation, anywhere back of the fines. The hospital of evacuation is the third of the four stages through which a wounded man passes. ”

“ 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. ”

“ For instance, if one of the fever-patients was taking veratrum, I must see it dropped and given, and note the pulse. If one was just struggling through dysentery, I must attend to his nourishment, and generally fed him myself. Down-stairs was one large room, and three of good size, but smaller. The large one was also a ward. My business-room opposite was also the linen-room of the hospital. Shelves ran from floor to ceiling, a counter in front of them. In one corner stood my desk, and beside it a large country rocking-chair; in another a rough lounge for the convenience of visiting patients. ”

“ Often a severe illness is, and oftener still would be prevented by a week’s change of air, when the peculiar hospital-languor, so well known in hospitals, and so indescribable outside of them, first fairly sets in. ”

“ In each of the six wards, of which four are on the ground floor, there is a head-nurse and an assistant, with six helpers for the children's, and four for the adult department, beside the night nurses, who sit up in case of any emergency. There is accommodation for 250 sufferers and for the 40 nurses, attendants, and domestics required for the service of the hospital; so the 220 patients there now, represent the approaching period when a new wing will have to be added, even if only the urgent cases are to be admitted. ”

“ Two orderlies put the patient on a stretcher, and he was taken into the next room for examination. Later in the day the amputation was performed.
MOVED TO HOSPITALS IN CITIES
"From these little field hospitals, as soon as the men can be moved, they are taken to some general hospital in the nearest large city, where several thousands can be cared for. Such a hospital exists in this neighborhood in the building of a normal college, where every corner is used in housing wounded men. ”

“ If Miss Parkins goes on the ward in a routine way as a patient, she will automatically be suspected by them and therefore become less valuable to us. But if she falls upon the street with a heart attack within four blocks of the hospital, arrives at the accident room entrance in an ambulance, and is admitted to Ward B, Bed 11.... ”

“ In the nearest hospitals to the front, half the wounded, and on some days more than half, die where they are put. Often they die in the ambulance, and one's care in drawing them out is wasted, for they will never feel again. I found one always took the same care, though the greenish-yellow of the exposed hands or feet showed the truth. Laid on the floor of the main hospital itself, some screamed or moaned, some whimpered like sick children, especially in their sleep, some lay quiet, with glazed eyes out of which sight was passing. ”

“ Two Paris friends, Mlle Block and Miss Grey, gave the hospital very real assistance by providing two ambulances and placing them at the disposal of the medical staff. They were both of them splendid drivers, and they did many a hard day’s work, and thought no pains too great, no journey too long, that gave some wounded man a chance of recovery. ”

“ We were to have a Hospital in town, and, when required, were to take the field with the German Ambulance Corps. Our services were gladly accepted by the Surgeon-General, [162] and two large Hospitals were at once handed over to us; the first—a sick and fever Hospital—containing 150 men; the second, consisting of the railway terminus, with its waiting and refreshment rooms, stores and offices, in which lay 65 wounded; and there were beds to accommodate 150 more. We received, therewith, Hospital plant, and a staff of trained military infirmarians. ”

“ In this building a thousand beds could be placed, and it is hoped that funds will be available to undertake this larger ambulance service.
Meanwhile the American Hospital at Neuilly is not to be affected in any way by this emergency undertaking, but it will continue its work for Americans in need of medical attention. The special hospital for soldiers is to be an American offering under the auspices of the American Hospital and under the direction of the Medical Board of that institution. ”

“ The quiet night routine went on about him; the strong, pervasive odor of antiseptics; the padded tap of the nurses' rubber soles as they went softly on their rounds; the occasional click of a glass and a spoon somewhere; the piteous wail of a suffering child in a distant ward; the sharp whir of an electric bell; the homely thud of the elevator on its errands up and down; even the controlled yet ready spring to service of all concerned when the ambulance rolled up and a man on a stretcher, with a ghastly cut in his head and face, was brought in ”

“ From the dressing station I was taken to a field hospital, about fifteen kilometers to the rear, and there placed in a ward in a tent. The purpose of the field hospital is to treat soldiers who are too severely wounded to be taken to base hospitals. My wound was again examined, cleaned and dressed and again the terrible swab went its depth. About 4 o'clock that afternoon I was loaded into another stretcher on an ambulance and taken to Base Hospital 51 at Toul. ”

“ For the first an emergency case, similar to that in use in England, Germany, and other Red Cross Treaty Nations, and this has been adapted to Red Cross needs and methods under the direct supervision of the Medical Board of the Red Cross Hospital. It contains material and surgical dressings of the best class known to modern surgery. A most valuable part of the permanent equipment of this emergency case is a series of emergency charts, arranged for instantaneous reference, giving simple brief instructions for dealing with every conceivable case of accident, pending the arrival of the doctor. ”

“ As each ambulance arrived the stretchers, their occupants for the most part silent, were drawn gently out and carried into the reception hall and laid upon the floor. At once each man—the nature of whose wounds permitted it—was given a cup of hot tea or of cold water, and a cigarette. Two by two they were lifted on to the trestles, and examined and dressed by the surgeons. ”

“ Each wagon was drawn by ten mules and driven by a Kaffir, and over the dusty hood of each the red cross flag waved in the shimmering heat. They came along slowly, rocking and groaning over the uneven veldt like staggering men, and each drew up at one or other of the little hospitals under the ridge. Every ambulance carried a certain number of wounded men who were well enough to sit up, and a smaller number who were lying on stretchers--the "sitting up" and "lying down" cases, as they were respectively called. ”

“ In Casualty Clearing and Base Hospitals there are, of course, always a number of sick to be visited, and this work falls within the region of ordinary civilian hospital work. In many cases where a man is first hit and he is not in a too collapsed condition, his first thought is of home; and a painful anxiety is often evinced by the sufferer to get a message through, describing his condition, before his name appears in the casualty list ”

“ In a Military Hospital, the proportion of heavy cases is in ordinary times considerably below the average proportion of such cases in a Civil Hospital, open, as the latter is, to accidents, and to the cases of dangerous disease always more or less rife in low and crowded neighbourhoods. ”

“ In addition to the five hospitals in different parts of London which have been opened whenever a fresh epidemic has broken out, there is a very elaborate ambulance system, by which a suitable carriage with a nurse and porter is despatched, as soon as notice is received, to the patient’s place of residence and removes the patient to the nearest hospital. ”

“ Instruments sterilised in advance permit the surgeons to commence to operate three hours after having received their orders to establish the hospital tent. Other tents can be established to the number of five. A hundred wounded persons can thus be taken care of and treated in the open country. Reserve ambulances can be called upon in case of need. As soon as operated upon, and out of immediate danger, the wounded, in the majority of cases, can be evacuated to permanent hospitals further back in the rear. ”

“ An extra room adjoining the sick-room is invaluable to a good nurse, for here, if it be warm weather, she can, when necessary, have a fire, can air linen, wash up any plates, glasses, etc., and do a hundred and one little duties she would otherwise be compelled to perform in the sick-room, thus saving much disturbance to the patient, and keeping the sick-room as it should be kept, free from noise or litter of any sort. ”

“ A bright, airy, easily cleaned, and comfortable room, is to be selected, and adjoining it, if possible, should be a smaller one for an attendant or nurse. The patient is put to bed and kept there from three to six weeks, or longer as may be necessary, and during this time is allowed to see no one except the nurse and doctor, since the presence of friends requires conversation and mental effort. The patient in severe cases must be fed by the nurse in order to avoid expenditure of the force required in the movement of the arms. ”