Page:Walker (1888) The Severn Tunnel.djvu/177

106 to keep a resident assistant there. Early in the summer the erection of a separate cottage hospital had been commenced, which included a residence for a matron, rooms for the resident doctor, for a sister to superintend the nursing, and for an assistant nurse.

This hospital was completed and opened in the second week in October. A plan showing the arrangement of the wards and the dwelling-house is given.

Considering the magnitude of the undertaking, the difficulties encountered, and the number of men employed night and day, we were very free from accidents during the six years the works were in progress; but still we found the hospital of the greatest value in treating both accidents and diseases, such as congestion of the lungs, rheumatic fever, etc. The principal illness that the men suffered from was pneumonia, caused no doubt by the great heat and damp below, and then careless exposure when they came out of the works.

Besides the general wards in the hospital, we had an operating-room, an emergency-ward, and a ward for women and children.

It has been before stated that the mission-room to hold 250 was opened in the end of the year 1880. By the end of November, 1881, this room was so crowded that it became necessary to take down the partition which separated the schoolrooms from the mission-room, to remove the day-school entirely into