In 1848 the widow of Chief Justice Reid signified her intention of adding a wing corresponding with the first, to be named after her deceased husband.
Special provision was made for the treatment of children by the erection of the Morland wing, in rear of the Reid wing. This building was added in memory of Mr. Thomas Morland, an active member of the Committee of Management, and was opened in 1874. It contained rooms afterwards utilized for outdoor patients, private wards, and accommodation for servants, which was subsequently transformed to a female ward.
In accordance with the views of the founders of the Hospital, accommodation was long provided for patients suffering from infectious fevers. Cases of smallpox, typhus, scarlatina, diphtheria and measles, were for years accommodated in the central building or its wings. During the great epidemic of typhus or as it was better known, ship fever, brought to the country chiefly by Irish immigrants, the Hospital capacity was taxed to its utmost, and temporary sheds had to be erected for the accommodation of the sufferers. In the years 1831-32, 1832-33 and 1847-48, 5,631 patients were admitted of whom 3,458 suffered from fever. Doctor Howard, in his report, states that over half the fever patients were cases of typhus.
Smallpox again, which in former years was very prevalent in Montreal, was treated in special wards of the Hospital. Owing to the disease spreading to other patients a brick building afterwards used as a kitchen and laundry, was constructed in the rear of the Richardson wing. Half the cost of this structure was generously donated by Mr. Wm. Molson; the building was used for infectious cases up to 1894. At that time, after many applications and much pressure from the governors, the city undertook to subscribe $6,000 annually to the Hospital to defray the expense of providing for infectious disease. Two houses were utilized for a year in the neighbourhood, and the department was then moved to the Civic Hospital, on Moreau Street. Half this building is controlled by the General Hospital and is supported financially by the city.
Two surgical pavilions and a large operating theatre were opened for use in December, 1892. Mr. George Stephen, afterwards Lord Mount Stephen, one of the generous donors of the Royal Victoria Hospital, contributed $50,000 in memory of the late Dr. G.W. Campbell, formerly dean of McGill Medical Faculty, and a bequest from Mr. David Greenshields of $40,000 was also utilised in adding these wings. From that time accommodation for surgical cases has been excellent. The old part of the Hospital was, however, in a very unsatisfactory state. The wards were small and the building antiquated. Lack of funds only had long prevented a radical change being made in this block. The president, Mr. F. Wolferstan Thomas, set himself the task of collecting funds to renovate this part of the building and to render it in keeping with the surgical side. As the outcome of his untiring work in aid of the Hospital $100,000 was collected. The interior of the old building was pulled down and it was skillfully remodelled, under the direction of Mr. A.T. Taylor, for the accommodation of medical, gynæcological and ophthalmic patients, the old operating room being retained as a medical lecture, and gynæcological operating theatre.
It was evidently the intention of the founders of the Hospital to provide for proper nursing so far as was possible, before the advent of Florence Nightingale. We read in the first annual report, among other rules, that the nurse, on admission of a patient, “shall immediately wash his or her face and hands, neck and arms, feet and legs, with tepid water; she shall give him or her (if he or she have none) an hospital shirt and night-cap.” Again they are instructed to keep themselves clean and decently clothed, and to be diligent in complying with the orders of the medical officers, surgeon and matron. Surely we have here inculcated two important duties of the modern nurse, cleanliness and obedience.
In 1890 the present successful school of nurses was established and in 1897 the Jubilee Nursing Home on the hospital grounds was being erected, while in 1913 a large annex was added to meet the growing demands of the population on the charity of the Hospital.
THE NOTRE DAME HOSPITAL
This institution is situated n Notre Dame Street, near the eastern Canadian Pacific Railway station, in a populous commercial and manufacturing centre, and in close proximity to the harbour.
It was founded in 1880. The branch of the Laval Medical Faculty, established in Montreal in 1877, had no hospital, its professors and students being excluded from the Hôtel Dieu, on account of the difficulties that had arisen between the Faculty and the Montreal School of Medicine and Surgery, the latter holding the Hôtel Dieu. Knowing that a hospital was greatly needed in the commercial and manufacturing part of the city, and would afford abundant clinical material, the professors undertook to found Notre Dame Hospital.