5. Corridors as proposed at Netley are useful and objectionable. They lie between one side of the wards and air. They make oversight of the patients more difficult; and when a number of patients are walking up and down them, the serious cases in the wards are disturbed. On the other hand, it is desirable to have some place of exercise and yet shelter for patients, capable of being heated and of being overlooked. There ought to be no accumulation of patients at the same time suffered.
With regard, however, to corridors inside the building, if there are none it is all the better for the sick; that each ward should have two rows of large windows opening direct into the outer air is indispensable, as has often been said already.
6. Provided this double range of windows be secured, double wards of thirty on the same floor would cause no disadvantage to the sick.
But, if such be determined on, let especial care be taken to separate the two, not by a showy hall, but by a lobby and an ample staircase, extending from top to bottom of the building, and communicating freely with the open air at the roof, as well as by the stair-windows: admitting a thorough current of external air, so that, of a morning especially, the two wards do not mutually send the close air into each other.
The lobby should not be turned into a vestibule. Thorough air is all that is wanted. Patients should not be suffered to remain in it.
Material of Ward Utensils.
7. The material of the different utensils required for ward service should be settled. In the use of glass or earthenware for all eating, drinking, and washing vessels there is great superiority as to cleanliness, and the saving of time and labour in cleaning these materials, to those of tin or other metal. Still two things have to be weighed against these great advantages. First, if these vessels are cleaned by Ward-Orderlies, the amount of breakage would be much greater in proportion than as done by Nurses, and it is imperative to have as few women as possible in the service of Military Hospitals. Secondly, it is very important to avoid even the appearance, especially at first, of anything like introducing luxury into Army Hospitals; and I can quite understand this appearing like luxury.
The material of one description of ward-vessels should in particular be left to the Surgeons. In sending to distant foreign or war-stations, urinals of tin have one material advantage over those of glass or china, that they do not break so easily; but, as to home-service, these tin urinals cannot, by any amount of cleaning, be freed from an unclean smell. In Vienna General Hospital, where economy is exceedingly attended to, all the urinals are of glass, as the superior cleanliness is considered well worth the additional expense. A damaged or broken glass or earthenware urinal is dangerous; and if there is difficulty in obtaining the immediate issue of a new for a damaged one, it is better to have tin.
In Vienna General Hospitals the patients’ eating vessels were formerly of tin; but were some time ago furnished of earthenware, for the same reasons as those given above; also because the hot tin vessels were found awkward to the patients. (I do not think much of this latter reason; in hospitals, there is little fear of food reaching the patients too hot). In Vienna and Berlin Military Hospitals the eating vessels are all of tin.