Military hospital

“ It might also be right to have reserve wards for what must occur every now and then in a Military Hospital, an influx of patients beyond the usual number, or an outbreak of cholera, or some malignant epidemic, which it might be desirable to isolate from the other patients. ”

“ I visited both of the great hospitals, Savonières and Hôpital Central, inside of an hour, for a military automobile goes like lightning and turns aside for no one. The former hospital is situated in a beautiful park some distance from Bar-le-Duc, and the greater one in a cup of the hills, and looks like a new Western mining town. There are some twenty or thirty barracks, two of concrete; but it is so unmistakably a hospital and nothing else (in France) that a taube recently had no difficulty in picking out the main building and dropping a bomb in the operating room. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Still it had better be left to surgeons to say whether, in Military Hospitals, it would not be preferable to have, in each ward, only a portable bath, on wheels, covered with india-rubber, to be brought into the ward for any urgent case; and to take all the men able to walk, or safely to be carried, to the Hospital baths. Of these, some trustworthy, or intended and supposed to be trustworthy, man, who ought to rank as a non-commissioned officer, should have charge. An intelligent and respectable-looking man, a serjeant, has charge of the baths in the Garrison Hospital at Vienna. ”

“ At the time of my visit the Mound City hospital was considered the best military hospital in the United States. This was due to the administrative talent of Dr. E. S. Franklin, of Dubuque, Ia., who, despite poverty of means and material, transformed the rough block of stores into a superb hospital, accommodating 1000 patients. Fifteen hundred had been crowded in it by dint of close packing.
“The most thorough system was maintained in every 299 department. There was an exact time and place for everything. Every person was assigned to a particular work and held responsible for its performance. ”

“ Though there is very little doubt possible that the enemy does not intend to respect hospitals, wherever they may be sited, in his bombing raids, the precaution is being taken of choosing new hospital sites well away from any point of military importance. No hospital will be established near military camps, important railway junctions, or bridges. ”

“ This oversight completely distinct from the government of the hospital, is excellent—it has always produced the best results. It is, besides, impossible to see establishments better kept than the military hospitals; the soldiers are nursed with much care, and treated, we would say, almost with respectful commiseration. Why not have a similar superintendence established in the civil hospitals, by men completely independent of the government and medical faculty? ”

“ The closure of the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., and the resulting construction of the National Military Medical Center at the National Naval Medical Center, Bethesda, Maryland, and a new military hospital at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, offer the Department of Defense the opportunity to provide state-of-the-art and world-class medical facilities offering the highest quality of joint service care for members of the Armed Forces and their families. ”

“ Military patients will know both things and names. Remember that Ward-Masters, Orderlies, and Nurses require inspection as well as patients. Whatever system of Hospital construction is adopted should provide for easy supervision, at unexpected times.
3. If from 24–30 Patients be the right Number, Sanitarily speaking, for a Ward, the Pavilion Plan should, in a Military Hospital, be so arranged that more than one such Ward should be on the same floor, for facility of Supervision.
3. The more we see of different systems, the more we see the great mistake of giving a Nurse too little to do. ”

“ The Boston Free Hospital in excellence of plan and beauty of design can be excelled by none. Philadelphia boasts the two largest military hospitals in the world. Of the twenty-three in and about Washington many are worthy of all praise. The general hospital at Fort Schuyler is admirable in plan and locale, and this latter condition is found to be of vast importance. A Rebel battery, with an incurable habit of using the hospital as a target, would scarcely be so dangerous as a low, water-sogged, clayey soil, with its inevitable results of fever, rheumatism, and bowel-complaints. ”

“ Hospitals built of coarse logs, with ground floors, with fire-places in the middle of them, and a hole in the roof, for the discharge of smoke, were found to be very conducive to the recovery of the soldiers from the hospital fever. This form of a military hospital was introduced into the army by Dr. ”

“ In conducting the Military Hospitals, we found that it was always right to discharge the Patients from the sick Hospitals as soon as they were recovered, and to send them either to Billet, or to a convalescent Hospital; because recovered Men are always the most riotous; besides they crowded the Hospitals, and were in Danger of catching fresh Disorders from those who were sick; and therefore the recovering Men in every Hospital ought to be reviewed once or twice a Week by the Physician or Surgeon, and the Names of such Men as are well enough, to be marked ”

“ And when the war was over, Miss Florence Nightingale, the soldier's nurse and friend, was an honoured guest in the royal family, 'putting before us,' writes the prince, 'all the defects of our present military hospital system, and the reforms that are needed.' On 5th March 1855, the Queen wrote to Lord Panmure suggesting the necessity of hospitals for sick and wounded soldiers, which eventually took shape in the great military hospital at Netley. ”

“ Still another value of this centralization of records and materials grows out of the exceptional mobility of military life. Frequently, it is necessary or desirable to transfer military patients from one hospital to another— as for example, from a post hospital to a more commodious and better-equipped general hospital, or perhaps to a hospital with unusual facilities for the treatment of a particular disease. ”

“ This would of course not apply to a Military Hospital, where it is important the Orderlies should become as thoroughly qualified as may be for foreign and war service. It is necessary that whatever exterior help is called in, should be closely overlooked; contractors and contractors’ servants being seldom overmuch troubled with conscience. ”

“ Anne’s Military Hospital. The structure was in an unfinished state, and the walls were not plastered. But it was thoroughly ventilated and free from dampness, and that meant much in a building designed for the care of the sick.
The house contained altogether about three hundred patients. Each ward held from twelve to fourteen men, and the rooms opened into one another. It was noon when the Sisters arrived, and they were shocked to find that many of the wounded men had not yet broken their fast. The first care of the newcomers was to relieve the hunger of the patients. ”

“ Now, in the case of Military Hospitals, there is one important simplification of the business, which need not be enlarged upon. All the patients are men. But there are two things which do not simplify the machinery of the Military Hospital. The attendants, in the plan proposed, are not (and cannot be) all Nurses, under the Matron; nor all Orderlies, under an Officer; there are Nurses under a Matron, and Orderlies under some Officer ”

“ Furniture must always be lifted, not dragged. In a Military Hospital where men are always at hand, this would matter less as to the wards, and the Nurses could help each other once a week in their bed-rooms, and manage alone in their day-rooms. ”

“ Sanitation is the first and paramount law of a Military Hospital; carpets and unnecessary furniture are a source of danger, for such a variety of diseases follow the troops that special care must be given to every possibility for infection and its prevention.
By five that evening the colonel, the matron and the nursing sisters arrived, and a few hours later came the balance of our officers and men. Motor lorries and ambulances toiled through the gates, laden with our equipment. ”

“ Another thing to be remembered is, that whatever classification may be carried out, we may be certain beforehand that numbers of patients from a vile cause will be in the ordinary surgical wards of every General Hospital in time of peace. Very severe cases of this sort give heavy work, and little trouble. They suffer much generally, alike from disease and treatment; are frightened, if not ashamed, about themselves ”

“ The truth was that nobody could teach our veteran Americans anything new in the management of a Field Hospital. They had all served their time during the four years of the American War, and under a system of military medical organisation which, as all authorities acknowledge, they had brought to perfection. This was the secret of the undoubtedly successful career of our Ambulance. And I must not omit to observe that it was they who introduced the anterior suspension splint for fractures and wounds of the joints, which we were the means of having adopted in many of the German Hospitals. ”

“ In the French Hospitals there are always a Number of Men who attend their Sick who belong to the Hospital, so that they have no Occasion to employ their Convalescents, as we are often obliged to do, where the Sick are attended by Nurses, who are commonly Soldiers Wives, and not so capable of doing such laborious Work as the Men. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And all Men employed about the Hospital ought to be reviewed once a Week by the Military Inspector, and likewise whenever a Party of Convalescents is going to join the Army, or their Regiments; that no Man may be allowed to remain with the Hospital, after he is fit to do Duty in his Regiment. ”

“ The men are evacuated from the field hospital to a base hospital in motor ambulances or by a combination of motor ambulances and railway trains. Theoretically, this should be done within a day or two with all cases except the very gravest. In practice, the men frequently lie in field hospitals for weeks before the opportunity of evacuation is found. The base hospitals are in cities or large towns, and serve as clearing-houses. They are well out of the military zone, being from five to fifteen miles behind the zone of artillery fire. ”

“ The Ober Inspector, a Landwehr civilian, who is supreme over the Hospital, and an Ober-Stabs-Arzt, both speak very strongly as to the superiority of this flooring over all others for Hospital use, and in particular over flooring which requires scrubbing. It has only been introduced of late years. They consider it equal to any amount of hospital wear and tear. The military patients, like those of the Charité, Bethanien, and St. Hedwig’s, wear hospital slippers, with soles thick enough to admit of their walking in the garden, when fine; when not fine, they are not allowed to go out. ”

“ As for the medical department, there is now a training provided for such soldiers as wish to qualify themselves for hospital duty. Formerly, the hospital was served by such men as the military officers thought fit to spare for the purpose; and they naturally did not send the best. These men knew nothing of either cleaning wards or nursing patients. Their awkwardness in sweeping and scouring and making beds was extreme; and they were helpless in case of anything being wanted to a blister or a sore. ”

“ Human life is, however, a more expensive article than any other. If human beings, and especially sick human beings, are to be spread over as much space as possible, which is now known to be an essential to health and more especially to recovery, this must be done under any system and can be best done under the Pavilion system. It of course necessarily entails a greater amount and cost of attendance and of supervision. Pure air and light are the prime necessities of a hospital. ”

“ While Regimental Hospitals are what they are, females never can be admitted there. On the other hand, if General Hospitals be established, one happy consequence will be that the cooking and washing will be taken out of the hands of the Hospital Serjeant, and regularly organized, it is hoped under a Captain-Superintendent of Orderlies. All Purveyor’s and Barrack stores, that is, Hospital stores and furniture will, it is hoped, fall under the charge of a Steward ”

“ As the equipment of military hospitals remains subject to the laws of war, persons attached to such hospitals cannot, on withdrawing, carry away any articles but such as are their private property. Under the same circumstances an ambulance shall, on the contrary, retain its equipment. ”

“ There are smaller buildings near by for the repairing of arms, and a regular field-hospital, completely furnished, 705 to supply medical or surgical aid to such as may fall suddenly sick or be wounded. ”