Page:EB1911 - Volume 13.djvu/814

Rh light and electricity, including photo-therapy, has given an importance to this department and treatment which it did not previously possess. We are of opinion that, on the whole, it is better and more economical to treat these cases in properly equipped departments of general hospitals than in separate institutions.

Women’s Hospitals.—These hospitals are not absolutely necessary, but considering their popularity with the women themselves, and that several of them have done excellent work, remembering too that women constitute the majority of the population, there seems to be some reason for their continuance.

The Evolution of the Modern Hospital.—The evolution of the modern hospital affords one of the most marvellous evidences of the advance of scientific and humanitarian principles which the world has ever seen. At the outset hospitals were probably founded by the healthy more for their own comfort than out of any regard for the sick. Nowadays the healthy, whilst they realize that the more efficient they can make the hospital, the more certain, in the human sense, is their own chance of prolonged life and health, are, as the progress of the League of Mercy has shown in recent years, genuinely anxious for the most part to do something as individuals in the days of health in the cause of the sick. Formerly the hospital was merely a building or buildings, very often unsuitable for the purposes to which it was put, where sick and injured people were retained and more frequently than not died. In other words the hygienic condition, the methods of treatment and the hospital atmosphere were all so relatively unsatisfactory as to yield a mortality in serious cases of 40%. Nowadays, despite, or possibly because of, the fact that operative interference is the rule rather than the exception in the treatment of hospital patients, and in consequence of the introduction of antiseptic and aseptic methods, the mortality in hospitals is, in all the circumstances, relatively less, and probably materially less, than it is even amongst patients who are attended in their own homes. Originally hospitals were unsystematic, crowded, ill-organized necessities which wise people refused to enter, if they had any voice in the matter. At the present time in all large cities, and in crowded communities in civilized countries, great hospitals have been erected upon extensive sites which are so planned as to constitute in fact a village with many hundreds of inhabitants. This type of modern hospital has common characteristics. A multitude of separate buildings are dotted over the site, which may cover 20 acres or upwards. In one such institution, within an area of 20 acres, there are 6 m. of drains, 29 m. of water and steam pipes, 3 m. of roof gutters, 42 m. of electric wires, and 42 separate buildings, which to all intents and purposes constitute a series of distinct, isolated hospitals, in no case containing more than forty-six patients. On the continent of Europe buildings of this class are usually of one storey; in the United States, owing to the difficulty of obtaining suitable sites and for reasons of economy, some competent authorities strenuously advocate high buildings with many storeys for town hospitals. In England the majority have two to three storeys each, the ward unit containing a ward for twenty beds and two isolation wards for one and two beds respectively. The two storeys in modern fever hospitals, however, are absolutely distinct—that is, there is no internal staircase going from one ward to the others, for each is entered separately from the outside. This system carries to its extreme limits the principle of separating the patients as much as possible into small groups; the acute cases are usually treated in the upper ward, and as they become convalescent are removed downstairs. In this way the necessity for an entirely separate convalescent block is done away with and the patients are kept under the same charge nurse, an arrangement which promotes necessary discipline. The unit of these hospitals is the pavilion, not the ward, and consists of an acute ward, a convalescent ward, separation wards, nurses’ duty rooms, store-rooms for linen, an open-air balcony upstairs into which beds can be wheeled in suitable weather, and a large airing-ground for convalescent patients directly accessible from the downstairs ward. Each of the pavilions is raised above the ground level, so that air can circulate freely underneath. The wall, floor and air spaces in the scarlet fever wards of one of these hospitals are respectively 12 ft., 156 ft. and 2028 ft. per bed; and in the enteric and diphtheria wards they have been increased to 15 ft., 195 ft. and 2535 ft. respectively. The provision of so large a floor and linear space, especially in the diphtheria wards, is an experiment the effect of which will be watched with considerable interest. A building of this type is a splendid example of the separate pavilion hospital, and is doing great service in the treatment of fevers wherever it has been introduced. Some idea of a hospital village, some of the wards of which we have been describing, may be gathered from the circumstances that it costs from £300,000 to £400,000, that it usually contains from 500 to 700 beds, and that the staff numbers from 350 to 500 persons. The medical superintendent lives in a separate house of his own. The nurses are provided with a home, consisting of several blocks of buildings under the control of the matron; the charge nurses usually occupy the main block; where the dining and general sitting-rooms are placed; the day assistant-nurses another block; and lastly, by a most excellent arrangement, the night nurses, 80 to 120 in number, have one whole block entirely given up to their use. The female servants have a second home under the control of the housekeeper, and the male servants occupy a third home under the supervision of the steward. The two main ideas aimed at are to disconnect the houses occupied by the staff from the infected area, and to place the members of each division of the staff together, but in separate buildings, under their respective heads. These objects are highly to be commended, as they have important bearings upon the well-being and discipline of the whole establishment and constitute a lesson for all who have to do with buildings where a great number of people are constantly employed.

The Hospital City.—We have shown that the modern hospital where an adequate site is available under the most favourable conditions has developed into a hospital village. No one who is familiar with the existing disadvantages of many of the sites and their surroundings of town hospitals in many a large city can have any doubt that, if the well-being of the patients and the good of the whole community, combined with economical and administrative reasons, together with the provision of an adequate system for the instruction and training of medical students and nurses, are to be the first considerations with those responsible for the hospitals of the future, the time will come, and is probably not far distant, when each great urban community will provide for the whole of its sick by removing them to a hospital city, which will be situated upon a specially selected and most salubrious site some distance from the town itself. 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. Medical opinion is more and more favouring the provision of convalescent and suburban hospitals, to which patients suffering from open wounds may be removed from the city hospitals. This course, which entails much additional expenditure, is advocated to overcome the difficulty arising from the fact that, in operation and other cases, the patients cease to continue to make rapid progress towards recovery after the seventh or ninth day’s residence in a city hospital. A change of such cases to the country restores the balance and completes the recovery with a rapidity often remarkable.

Thinking out the problem here presented in all its bearings, realizing the great and ever-increasing cost of sites for hospitals in great cities, the heavy consequential taxes and charges which they have to meet there, and all the attendant disadvantages and drawbacks, the present writer has ventured upon an anticipation which he hopes may prove intelligent and well-founded. Nearly every difficulty in regard to the cost of hospitals and in respect to all the many problems presented by securing