Query as to depriving certain Patients of Visitors.
1. Proper military and medical advice should be taken as to whether it would be advisable to draw a distinction between the venereal and the other patients.
In the Vienna Military Hospital they are locked up by themselves in particular wards, but are allowed to see their comrades at visiting hours.
In the Berlin Military Hospital they are locked up in wards, and allowed to receive no visits whatever, excepting, of course, from the Chaplain and the proper Military and Medical Officers; and in the case of dying patients from their nearest friends.
Nor are they allowed exercise in the grounds.
This excellent regulation makes them heartily tired of the venereal wards, and even this is a very salutary thing.
In the Vienna and Berlin Civil Hospitals, the venereal patients of both sexes are also placed in locked wards, and allowed no visitors. Nor are they allowed exercise in the grounds or garden.
In the two Paris Venereal Hospitals no visitors are allowed.
Now, as the more disagreeable the subject, the more necessary it is to be explicit upon it when entered upon, this wholesome discipline exists in a very faint degree in our great Civil Hospitals,—a thing not to be lost sight of in introducing any change in the Army Hospitals.
The three greatest London Hospitals have venereal wards. The female patients never leave the ward. The male patients take exercise in the court. In one case the rule is, that this should be at different hours from the other patients; the rule is not strictly adhered to.