CHAPTER V.
"Terra salutiferas herbas eademque nocentes
Nutrit, et urticæ proxima sæpe rosa est."[15]
Ovid.
A large London Hospital is (if we may be excused the Hibernianism, as Mr. Abernethy used to call it) a large microcosm. There is little in human nature, of which an observant eye may not here find types or realities. Hopes and fears, joys and sorrows, solace and suffering, are here strangely intermingled. General benevolence, with special exceptions. There is no human good without its shadow of evil; even the benevolent must take care. Impatient sensibility is much nearer a heartless indifference than people generally imagine. The rose, Charity, must take care of the nettle, Temper. The man who is chary or chafed, in yielding that sympathy which philosophy and feeling require, must beware lest he degenerate into a brute.
One of the brightest points in Abernethy's character, was, that, however he might sometimes forget the courtesy due to his private patients, he was never unkind to those whom charity had confided to his care. One morning, leaving home for the hospital, when some one was desirous of detaining him, he said: "Private patients, if they do not like me, can go elsewhere; but the poor devils in the hospital I am bound to take care of."
But to the hospital. Here we find some that have had the best this world can give—some who have known little but misery: the many no doubt lie between; but all come upon the same errand. Disease is a great leveller. There all flock, as to Addison's Mountain of Miseries, to get rid of their respective burthens, or to effect such exchanges as benevolence may have to offer, or the grave can alone supply. Our large hospitals have a most efficient "matériel;" the accommodations are extensive, the revenues princely. St. Bartholomew's, for example, has a revenue of between twenty and thirty thousand pounds a year, and is capable of receiving six hundred patients.
As regards what is mechanically or physically necessary to the comfort of the inmates, the ample appliances of our large hospitals leave little or nothing to be desired. There is every facility for the execution of the duties, that convenient space and orderly arrangement can suggest; in short, everything, in the general sense of the word, that money can procure. Then there are governors, whose hearts are as open as their purses, whose names are recorded in gold letters, as the more recent or current contributors to the funds of the establishment, and who rejoice in the occasional Saturnalia of venison and turtle; all duties or customs which may be observed, with the gratifying reflection that they are taking the thorns out of the feet of the afflicted; provided only that they do not involve forgetfulness of other duties, the neglect of which may plant a few in their own. The governors determine the election of the medical men, to whom the welfare of the patients and the interests of science are to be entrusted.
We have said that money cannot procure all things, and one of these is mind—a remark requiring some qualification certainly; but this we must refer to a subsequent chapter. Minds such as Abernethy's are not to be found every day; and, notwithstanding the sumptuous bill of fare we have already glanced at, there are many things in a large London Hospital yet to be desired—defects which, though it need no great penetration to discover, may, for aught we know, require public attention, a Government altogether better informed as to the actual defects in medical science, and the plastic hand of power, to supply.