A plea for an hospital on the south side of Glasgow : based on the inadequacy of the existing Glasgow infirmaries : being a paper read to the Glasgow Southern Medical Society, 16th May, 1878 / by Eben. Duncan.

  • Duncan, Eben.
Date:
1878
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A plea for an hospital on the south side of Glasgow : based on the inadequacy of the existing Glasgow infirmaries : being a paper read to the Glasgow Southern Medical Society, 16th May, 1878 / by Eben. Duncan. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    1871 (and 1 think it, will bu generally admitted that it ]ia« grown more rapidly than the suburltaii jtopulation of either Edinburgh or Liverpool), the disproportion has every year been getting greater. I think, gentlemen, that the facts which I have laid before you warrant the opinion that the time has now arrived for some endeavour to increase the hosj)ital accommodation of Glasgow, and in order to prove that this additional acconnnodation ought to be provided on the South Side of the city, I need only refer to the fact that the South Side, with a population of 200,000, teeming as it is with workshops and factories, has not a single hos- pital bed. It is clearly in the interests of the poor on the South Side of Glasgow that an hospital should be planted in such a position, and that patients suffering from acute disease or serious injuries can get access to it without under- going the danger and suffering of being jolted along the streets of the city for several miles. Forty years ago the late Professor Cowan, the father of the present Professor of Materia Medica in our University, pointed out the necessity for local institutions in the various districts of Glasgow, and, in par- ticular, advocated the institution of an hospital in the district of Gorbals, which w^as then a suburb of Glasgow. He says in a paper read to the Statistical Society of Glasgow in 1838 — The population of the city, at present 100,000, will in every probability continue comparatively stationaiy, while that of the suburbs, amounting to 153,000, will rapidly increase. Most of the factories and large public works are situated in the suburbs, and around these are the dwellings of the Avorkers, and it is in the suburbs that new works will be erected. There is not accommodation for a single patient situated in the populous and rapidly increasing suburbs of the city. Again, in another place—Instead of wasting public money on temporary buildings, it appears to me that small unpretending edifices should be erected in those situa- tions wdaere fever most generally prevails, capable of contain- ing 50 or GO patients each. There should be one in Calton, in Gorbals, and Anderston. Although these remarks have special reference to con- tagious disease, the principle here enunciated is what I now advocate. With regard to the question of increasing the number of our dispensaries, there is perhaps a greater difference of opinion. It has been commonly objected that in the great facilities w^hich are affoided in some cities for indiscriminate medical charity, a great injustice is done to the younger members of the medical profession who have shop dispen-