Licence: In copyright
Credit: Dr. Walter Robert Hadwen's works. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.
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![both hospitals should be closed as soon as possible, and tents erected elsewhere. HOW PATIENTS WERE TREATED. The condition of the patients was not mentioned in this brief Report. The second Report giving these details is not yet forth- coming. The City Council begrudge paying for it, and the Local Government Board having declined to investigate the scandal, also refuse to unearth the dark record of a period which has burnt itself into the very souls of the people of Gloucester. Until the end of April the wards were under-manned, the nurses were mostly un- trained, the earliest cases were not visited by a medical man for days and even weeks together; the whole time the patients lay in bed (prior to Dr. Brooke's arrival) not a drop of water was allowed for their fevered skins, not even for their hands; the patients must have been simply caked with filth. But nothing of this sort came within the scope of Dr. Coupland's instructions. It was not incumbent upon him to enquire into administration. If he does mention abscesses upon the body, or eyesight destroyed, or other horrible complications, presumably largely due to neglect, they have no voice for his official ears, beyond the fact that the sufferers were either unvaccinated or no trace of the alleged infantile vaccination could be detected upon the arms. On p. 5 he states, Certainly I myself saw nothing in any of my visits which could be ascribed to negligence of treatment. But it must be remembered it did not strike him that four patients in one bed, nor sixteen beds packed in a ward too small for eight, indicated a deficiency of air-space. And moreover, he only visited the wards on April 3rd; when he again visited the hospital in May, he admits (p. 5) The staff had been re- organised and the whole arrangements improved. If the character of treatment prior to Dr. Brooke's arrival was such as to merit the high eulogium which Dr. Coupland pronounces upon those in charge (although not instructed to do so) it would be very- interesting to read a manual on smallpox nursing from his pen. INSIDE AND OUTSIDE HOSPITAL. The total hospital fatality was 50 per cent, greater than that which obtained among patients treated at their own homes. Dr. Coupland tries to escape this damning fact by declaring that the worst cases [malignant and confluent] were sent away to the hospital by preference. The statement is untrue. There were 88 more of these cases outside than inside the hospital according to his own figures. I have made a careful calculation, 1st, of the period prior to Mr. Pitt's appointment on January 24th, 1896 when 59 cases admitted up to that time had only a caretaker and his wife and an occasional odd woman or two to look after them: 2nd, of the period during Mr.. Pitt's charge until Dr Brookes appointment on April 28th; 3rd, from the latter date until the end.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21361691_0314.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
