Page:Modern Hyderabad (Deccan).djvu/116

104 I will now briefly describe my visit to the Afzalganj hospital in October 1913, because by doing so I can give the best idea of what this hospital needs at the present time.

I had received an introduction to a minor official, and on my arrival, at about 11 a.m., he called a peon and sent me to the room of the head surgeon. This place was empty, but an open door led into an operating chamber, and I was told that I could go in there, if I liked. The screams proceeding from the operating theatre were so agonising that I left the surgeon's room in a hurry and returned to the person to whom I had an introduction, and after considerable hesitation and much explanation he promised to show me the hospital after the doctors had gone away. So I waited until the doctor Sahibs had finished their business, watching the windows of the operating theatre, outside which stood crowds of men with heads thrust forward and eyes fixed, no doubt, on the patient, and thinking of the time when, in England, lunatics, prisoners and sick persons had been sights that the public delighted to visit. That was not so very long ago, and but for Florence Nightingale might still be