Page:Transactions of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association, volume 1.djvu/460

 support and extension of the library and museum; following, in this, the precedent of the Northampton Infirmary, and furnishing an example which every hospital in the kingdom would do well to imitate. In 1829, Dr. Thackeray presented to the infirmary 400 volumes, part of his own library, to serve, as he said, as a nucleus for the formation of a Bibliotheca Medica for the use of the county and its neighbourhood. Libraries so formed should, of course, be accessible, under suitable regulations, to all medical men who might wish to resort to them. Dr. Thackeray had noticed, what all must have seen, the forlorn state of servants when incapacitated, either by age or infirmity, for continuing the exertions on which they depend for support. Their scanty earnings furnish but slight means of accumulation; these they either, through heedlessness, save not, or, as too often happens, they lose by fraud what they may have set apart. From this latter casualty they are now protected, by the admirable institution of savings banks; one of the greatest boons and wisest measures which the legislature of this country ever devised. Under either contingency, of not saving, or of losing what was accumulated, nay, with the utmost accumulations that the strictest economy and forethought could realise, the situation of the poor servant when superannuated, or enfeebled by disease, is oftentimes most deplorable. In many hospitals servants so circumstanced are provided with a retiring allowance. But this resource, though actually practised at the Bedford Infirmary, Dr. Thackeray prudentially distrusted. The general funds might not always be so prosperous as to allow it, and the executive