Page:Introductory lecture delivered in the Adelaide Hospital, Dublin, at the commencement of the clinical course, October 31, 1864 (IA b21916433).pdf/21

21 into an ordinary alms-house. Besides, if it is to remain an hospital, where the sick are to come for health, it must be obvious to everyone that the poor, for whose benefit it is intended, have a right to be assured that they will receive within its walls the best and most skilful treatment, otherwise they will naturally prefer admission to some other institution, even though it does not present to them the same religious advantages. This undoubtedly requires that eveiy reasonable effort should be made to create for it a scientific character, and to maintain it when it has been created.

Most of you, I dare say, are aware that a rule has been introduced within the last year, restricting the admission to Protestants only. With the religious question involved in this rule, the medical staff, as such, have nothing to do. Our business is to administer the rules as we find them; but the rule is important in its bearing upon the subject just touched on. At first it was feared that it would empty our beds, and deprive us of the materials necessary to an interesting and instructive clinique. The experience of the past nine months has dissipated such an apprehension. The accommodation at our disposal has never been equal to the number of applicants for admission. Again and again have we been obliged to refuse urgent and interesting cases for want of room. The restricted character of the admissions has only made the Protestant poor doubly anxious to come here. Then again, our wards are largely supplied by patients from remote parts of Ireland. Within the twelve months ending September 1, we have had 127 of this class alone, and these are always interesting and important cases, being sent up to town from the greater severity of their ailments, or their unusual character; and when to all this we add that the Protestant population of this city and neighbourhood is 80,000 or 90,000, there is plainly no reason why we ought not to be able to supply even a larger hospital than this with a constant succession of suitable cases. But while we of the medical staff have nothing to do with the making of the rule in question, I cannot help expressing my conviction of its propriety under existing circumstances. Deeply as I