Hospital construction and management / by Frederic J. Mouat and H. Saxon Snell.
- Date:
- 1889
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Hospital construction and management / by Frederic J. Mouat and H. Saxon Snell. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.
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![them. One of them, apparently despairing of their ever being so constructed and managed as to diminish those risks adequately, has even recommended their entire abolition. More than one other, of the greatest eminence amongst authorities, is of opinion that the hospitals of the future should be constructed of temporary materials, so as to be destroyed and renewed every ten years without undue cost, and that no more money should be squandered in building palaces which rapidly become abodes of disease and death. Upon this subject, M. Ch. Sarazin, one of the best and most reliable of recent authorities, has said— “To these generally admitted ideas [detached pavilion hospitals, not exceeding two stories, and conStrudted of permanent materials], is opposed the radical view. No more permanent hospitals ; they must be replaced by hut hospitals [wooden huts]. The permanent hospital is the hospital sepulchre, which nothing can keep wholesome, and which entails fabulous expenditure. The hut hospital, renewed in nearly all its parts every ten or fifteen years, alone presents the hygienic conditions necessary for hospitals, and admits of the realization of appreciable economies.” Mr. Lawson Tait, in remarking upon the gangreous action in wounds taken on in the Scutari Hospital, from disgraceful insanitary conditions, states that— This gangrene used to be common in our civil hospitals, and is too frequent even now. It may affect wounds of the most trifling nature. No reasonable person now doubts that it was and is due to bad sanitary arrangements That is, it is certain that a badly constructed or badly managed hospital will give bad results, even when it is not sufficiently unhealthy to be constantly exciting ‘ hospital gangrene ’ and ‘ hospital fever,’ and from the facts of ovariotomy it is equally certain, that the nearer a hospital approaches the conditions of an isolated private dwelling in its construction, and in the relations of its inhabitants, the better will its results be. “ In conclusion, I can only reiterate the opinions of Miss Florence Nightingale and Mr. Cadge, that it would be infinitely better to leave the sick and hurt in their own homes, than to place them in buildings where they are exposed to the risks apparent in the returns of certain hospitals.”* The celebrated Paul Dubois, in 1855, declared before the Academy of Medicine in Paris, that a woman would incur less danger to life in being confined unaided in the streets, than in being delivered in the Maternity or the Clinique. The perverse and persistent disregard of the true principles involved, which have been pointed out for more than a century, justified this gloomy view, particularly in Paris, where some of the practices pursued until lately, would be a reproach to the heads of the profession in that city, were they really responsible for them. The recent changes made in some of our metropolitan hospitals, in the vain attempt to bring them up to a higher standard than their original defects will admit of, show that those principles are far from being accepted among ourselves ; while the enormous cost, and other objections to the new Hotel Dieu and St. Thomas’s Hospital, make it impossible to refer to them otherwise than as examples to avoid. The most notable examples of erroneous views of re-construdtion with which I am acquainted, are those carried out in the University College and Westminster Hospitals, neither of which can be considered to be in harmony with principles now so universally recognised, that to depart from them must be regarded as a reproach. Lawson Tait: Op. cit., pp. 129-30.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21911319_0065.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
