Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Medical charity : its abuses and how to remedy them. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.
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![If to the conjectural estimate given above of the cost of the medical charities supported by endowments and voluntary con- tributions we add the actual cost of the institutions under the management of the Metropolitan Asylum Board, we find the total cost to be above seven millions of pounds; and even this sum does not include the cost of either the County Lunatic Asylums—Hanwell and Colney Hatch, or of the City of Londou Lunatic Asylum, or of the workhouse infirmaries. In closing these remarks on the cost of the land, buildings, and furniture of the various medical institutions above adverted to, we cannot help directing attention to an astounding contrast of the total sum expended on the hospitals and asylums under the management of the Metropolitan Asylum Board with that expended on St. Thomas's Hospital: leaving the Hampstead Hospital out of the account, we see that the six other hospitals built by that board at a total cost of 487,000^., contain collec- tively 4271 beds; whereas St. Thomas's Hospital alone has cost about the same sum, and will contain only 600 beds! In writing the preceding pages we have had three objects in view: First, to show what is the proportion of the metro- politan population which is habitually receiving medical charity ; Secondly, to show what is the annual cost of that charity; and Thirdly, to show vhat the total cost of the 60,000 in- patients, and of the 1,140,000 out-patients, who were under treatment during 1872 was extravagantly great—was, in fact, at least 300,000i. more than it ought to have been, even on the assumption that there is no extravagance in respect to the land and buildings occupied by the charities—an assumption which will itself perhaps be held to be very extravagant indeed. But we shall now proceed to inquire whether the ],200,000 recipients of medical charity in London are really and truly proper objects of such charity in any rational sense of that term. On the census night, April 3rd, 1871, the population of London was, within the tables of mortality, 3,251,804 ; within the Parlia- mentary boundaries, 3,008,101; within the limits of the Metropolis Local Management Act, 3,264,530; within the London School Board District, 3,265,005; within the pohce circle, 3,883,092. The police circle comprises a considerable number of important centres in which there must be medical charities, consisting chiefly of dispensaries, but comprising also a few hospitals not included in the list given in the beginning of this essay. We know, for example, that Acton and Ealing have each a dispensary of their own. Croydon, also within the police circle, is so large that ■we feel sure it must have at least one medical charity of its own. Hackney, Stepney, Fulham, Stoke Newington, Bow, Bromley,](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22650489_0027.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
