through which eager students are hurrying. The door opens, and we find ourselves in a theatre, as full as it can possibly be of the future surgeons of England, now very rough and noisy. At the bottom, far beneath us, is a small space with a long narrow table, covered with oilskin; behind the table is a door. That door opens, and one or two of the élite of the students known as dressers enter. A matronly female, dressed in the hospital garb, follows; some stout porters bring in a poor creature gently, and place him on the table, and a few professors and professional assistants fill up the group; the noisy students are still and eager. The professor advances to the table, in a few words explains the nature of the malady, and the patient, more dead than alive, endeavours to nerve himself for his impending fate. It is our old friend; his leg is smashed and requires amputation. An assistant administers chloroform, while the operator looks on, watch in hand. In a few seconds it is clear the patient is insensible, and the knife is handed to the operator, who, with his arm bare, and his sleeves tucked up, commences his painful task. Up squirts the red blood, and many a pale face and averted eye around testify how painful the exhibition is to
those who are not accustomed to it. Happily, the medical men near have the calm composure and readiness of resource true science suggests. The first incision made, and the skin peeled around, an assistant hands a saw, and in the twinkling of an eye the limb is severed, and the stump, bleeding and smoking, is being sewn up by skilful hands almost before the poor fellow wakes up, wearied and exhausted by loss of blood, from what must have been to him, if we may judge by his moans and exclamations, a terrible dream. As soon as possible he is borne away, the blood is sponged up, the table wiped down; and another patient, it may be a pale-faced girl or a little boy suffering from some fatal malformation, succeeds. All that humanity can suggest is resorted to. Here science loses her stern aspects, and beats with a woman’s tenderness and love; and not in vain, for from that table rise, who otherwise would have painfully perished, many to bless their families, it may be the world. But all is over, and we follow the crowd out, avoiding that other passage leading to the dissecting-room, where on many a table lie the mangled forms of what were once men and women, in all stages of
dissection and decay, with students hard at work on them, painfully gathering or seeking to gather a clue to the mystery of mysteries we call life. Possibly by the fire-place some half-dozen young fellows will be smoking and drinking beer. But why note the contrast? Out of the dissecting-room, beyond the narrow precincts of the hospital, masked in gay clothes, with faces all red with paint and wrinkled with idiotic leer, stand side by side the living and the dead.
The principal London Hospitals are the following:—1. St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, in West Smithfield, first founded in the twelfth century, and refounded by Henry VIII. in 1546. The building, a spacious quadrangular structure, is principally modern, having been finished in 1770. It makes up 580 beds. In 1848,71,573 were relieved by this hospital, viz., 5,826 inpatients, 19,149 out-patients, and 46,598 casual ditto. Necessity is the only recommendation to this institution; and patients are received without limitation. The medical staff is equal to any in the metropolis. The staircase was gratuitously painted by Hogarth. 2. Guy’s Hospital, St.
Thomas’s Street, Southwark, founded in 1721, contains accommodation for 580 in-patients, and has an excellent museum and theatre of anatomy. This magnificent hospital, which consists of two quadrangles and two wings, was founded and endowed by Thomas Guy, a bookseller, who expended £18,793 upon the building, and left £219,419 for its endowment—the largest sum, perhaps, that has ever been expended by any individual on similar purposes. Recently, however, Guy’s Hospital has met with another benefactor, but little inferior, in point of liberality, to its founder; a citizen, of the name of Thomas Hunt, having bequeathed to it, in 1829, the princely sum of £200,000! The medical school attached to this hospital, while under the superintendence of the late Sir Astley Cooper, was one of the most extensive, and probably, also, the best in the empire. 3. St. Thomas’s Hospital, in High Street, Borough, was formed out of two other charities by Edward VI., and rebuilt in 1693. Additions were made in 1732, and a large part was rebuilt in 1836. It contains 18 wards, and 428 beds. It has an income of about £25,000 a year, derived almost wholly from rents of estates in London and the country.
4. St. George’s Hospital, near Hyde Park Corner, lately rebuilt, has a fine front, 200 feet in length, facing the Green Park. It accommodates 460 in-patients. 5. The Middlesex Hospital, near Oxford Street, founded in 1745, has 285 beds, and relieves numerous out-patients. 6. London Hospital, in Whitechapel, was founded in 1740. Its wards accommodate about 250 patients. 7. Westminster Hospital, rebuilt in 1833, near the Abbey, has 174 beds; but three wards, containing space for fifty additional beds, are unfurnished, notwithstanding there is a great demand for hospital accommodation. 8. The Marylebone and Paddington Hospital, opened in 1850, has 150 beds, which it is proposed to increase to 376, supposing the necessary funds to be forthcoming. This, and the four last mentioned hospitals, depend wholly, or almost wholly, on voluntary subscriptions, which are said to be very insufficient to meet the demands upon them. The University College and King’s College Hospitals, and Charing Cross Hospital, are smaller establishments of the same nature, each accommodating about 120 patients, and there are other establishments of the same description. Medical schools are connected with the above
hospitals, in which lectures are delivered by the officers, and which are attended by several hundreds of students. Within the last few years the number of medical students has considerably decreased.
PORTLAND PLACE.
The worst effects of drunkenness are, perhaps, after all, its indirect ones. It is a sad sight to see man stricken down in his prime, and woman in her beauty; to see individuals’ hopes and prospects blighted; to see in that carcase staggering by the utter wreck and ruin of an immortal soul. But this is but a small portion of the damage done to humanity by the ravages of intemperance. Look at our great social evil. I need not name it. No one who walks the streets of London by night requires to be informed what that is. Has drink nothing to do with it? Ask that unfortunate, who has just commenced her evening’s walk. She will tell you that when she parted with her innocence she had previously been drugged with drink; that if it were not for drink she could not pursue her unhallowed career; that her victims are stimulated by drink; and that without the gin-palace or the public-house she and such as she could not exist. I do not
now speak of the worst forms of prostitution, of the gin-palaces in the East frequented by drunken sailors, where women are kept as a source of attraction and revenue; but of the better classes, of the dashing women who are supplied with expensive dresses by respectable Oxford-street tradesmen in the expectation of being paid by some rich victim; the women whom you meet dressed so gay in Regent-street or Portland-place.