Near Blackfriars Bridge he met a policeman, to whom he briefly reported the incident. The man listened with stolid indifference.
‘They are a bad lot about here, at nights, sir,’ he said composedly; ‘and it ain’t a place for decent people at this hour.’
The constable’s idea evidently was that decent people should keep out of the way of the roughs, not that it was his duty to keep the roughs from molesting the decent people who might be compelled to use the thoroughfare.
Philip entered his dreary chambers again. He felt better, but still he could not sleep.
LONDON HOSPITALS AND DISPENSARIES.
From the day when Rahere the troubador, in the year 1123 A.D., founded the hospital of St Bartholomew, the number of hospitals, dispensaries, infirmaries, and other institutions for the cure and medical treatment of the sick poor, has gone on increasing, till now it stands at considerably over one hundred and fifty for London and its district alone. This is altogether exclusive of the workhouse infirmaries. Besides hospitals and dispensaries, there are included in the above number institutions for the supply of surgical instruments, &c., either free, or at such reduced prices as bring them within the reach even of the very poor. Twelve of the London hospitals have medical schools attached to them, amongst which is one for the education of lady-doctors. Differences of opinion of course exist as to the medical woman, some no doubt regarding her as a great acquisition, and one of the glories of the nineteenth century; whilst others would speak of her as an institution naturally to be expected in the dark ages, but quite an anomaly in a civilised age. Which of the views may be the correct one, we will not pretend to say. However this may be, in Henrietta Street stands the medical school for women, which is in connection with the Royal Free Hospital, Gray’s Inn Road.
The hospitals with medical schools attached undertake the treatment of almost every form of disease both surgical and medical. Still, there are some diseases which it is necessary should be treated apart in special hospitals, and the chief of these is that terrible scourge of past times, smallpox. Not only smallpox but scarlet fever and other infectious diseases have to be excluded from some of the hospitals of which we are speaking, inasmuch as they are not all provided with wards set apart for infectious cases. To get an idea, however, of the great variety of work undertaken by the largest hospitals, it may be well to glance at the various departments of medicine and surgery represented at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, the oldest of these London institutions. In addition to the out-patients’ rooms, and wards devoted to the treatment of ordinary medical and surgical diseases and accidents, there are the following special departments: A department for skin diseases; for diseases of the eye, ear, and throat; an orthopædic department; a dental department; a department for the special diseases of women; a maternity department; and lastly, in the case of this hospital, a ward for the treatment of cases of infectious disease. The average number of in-patients is estimated at over six thousand annually, and the out-patients at more than one hundred and fifty thousand. It will readily be believed that the work of the physicians and surgeons, both visiting and resident, connected with such an institution is by no means light. There are many other general hospitals in various parts of London, besides those having medical schools attached to them, but we cannot speak of them here. The nature of their work is much the same as that of the others, though of course the extent of it is more limited.
Coming next to the dispensaries—their name is legion. Almost every parish in London has one or more, and they are very abundant in the immediate suburbs also. Some of these dispensaries are free, others are to a greater or less extent self-supporting. It is, we hope, needless to say that the public dispensaries of which we are speaking are not to be confounded with the private dispensaries set up by medical men, quite legitimately, for their own benefit, but which are not unfrequently conducted upon the lowest of commercial principles. The public dispensaries of London, with their committees of management and staffs of physicians and surgeons—who in the case of the free dispensaries are almost invariably honorary—do excellent work, and are worthy of all, and more than all, the support which they obtain. Unlike the majority of hospitals, they undertake the treatment of disease at the patients’ own homes; and by calling in the aid of the nursing institutions, they are able to supply not only medical attendance and medicine, but also trained nurses. Recently, an effort has been made to increase the number of provident dispensaries; and this indeed appears to be one of the best ways of meeting the difficulty of supplying good medical treatment to the poor cheaply, without demanding of medical men more unpaid work. It has been estimated that the medical profession does more work without payment than the rest of the professions put together.
We will now say a few words concerning the special hospitals and dispensaries. And first, it is to be remembered that all are not of the same merit. Many of them may be said to be above praise; but some, it is to be feared, are almost beneath contempt. Indeed, the opinion of those in the medical profession best able to judge of the matter is, we believe, strongly opposed to the multiplication of special hospitals, except of course for those diseases which cannot be advantageously treated in the general hospitals. Enumerating now the special hospitals and dispensaries in their alphabetical order, first of all come those for the treatment of cancer, of which there are two. Then there are eight hospitals for children. A visit to the hospital in Great Ormond Street is calculated to make most persons enthusiastic on the subject of well-managed children’s hospitals; and many readers will remember the glowing description given by Charles Dickens of the East London Hospital for Children. Of hospitals for diseases of the chest there are five. The physicians of the general hospitals do not, if they can avoid it, admit patients suffering from consumption. The air of a hospital in which wounds and diseases of almost every kind are being treated is ill fitted to give any good chance of recovery to a case of consumption, which requires almost more than anything else fresh air and plenty of it; and if such a patient gets no good, he only occupies uselessly the place of some one who might benefit greatly by admission. Chest diseases require, too, arrangements for the securing of appropriate temperature, and this it would not be easy to do in a general hospital. It is well, therefore, that there should be special hospitals for diseases of the chest, and it is to be regretted the number is at present quite insufficient. Still, these chest hospitals contrive to treat a very large number of patients in the course of the year, the average being estimated at considerably over thirty-two thousand.
There are six hospitals and infirmaries for the throat and ear; and three for diseases of the nervous system. Next we come to the fever hospitals—four in number. It is almost impossible to overrate the value of these hospitals. They not only tend to prevent the occurrence of epidemics, by removing the fever-stricken from the healthy, but they also save many from the untimely death that might have befallen them in their own ill-ventilated homes, and with the intermittent nursing which alone they could have secured. And further; even when the danger of death is past, the continuous care which can be given to patients in a hospital may restore many more to sound health, who in their own homes would only have escaped death to remain for the rest of their days miserable invalids.