Report of the Committee appointed May 17, 1866, to consider and report upon the proposed erection of fever wards.

  • John Radcliffe Hospital.
Date:
[1866?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report of the Committee appointed May 17, 1866, to consider and report upon the proposed erection of fever wards. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    among the poor in Oxford, and have repeatedly witnessed the aversion which some of them have to anything approaching parish relief. I have, at the same time, seen them express a willingness to go to the Infirmary if thev could obtain a turn.” These remarks, it will be observed, bear all upon the expediency of connecting any place for the special reception of Fever with some previously established General Hospital, a subject to which we shall have to recur, as well as upon the particular objection as to the prejudices of the poor with which we have been dealing. But even if such unwillingness did exist, we submit that the great benefit which the early removal of a fever patient from the place in which the disease seizes him confers, firstly, on himself, and, secondly, on those who would otherwise have to attend to him in his own home, should entirely outweigh the consideration of it. .As Messrs. Bristowe and Holmes sug- gest (Report, p. 469), as to the Patient himself, a removal to a Hospital not only implies that he gets the medicines pre- scribed for him, but it also gives us a reliable guarantee that he gets what in his own home he can only hope for—viz., pure air, good nursing, and the punctual issue and administration of his diet, which, in such cases, may be of as much conse- quence as that of the drugs. What is technically called a “ simple case,” whereby to test the benefits of early removal and isolation of the first cases of Fever which may show them- selves, is furnished us by the history of the Union Infirmary at Witney. Of it Dr. Batt writes thus: “We have Fever Wrards detached from, but standing near to (a distance of about 12 yards separating them) our Workhouse. They en- able us to weed out and transplant the first cases of any epi- demic occurring in the house, and of late years we have had none of those serious visitations of Fever which led to their erection ; indeed, they have done their work so effectually that, on this very account, they have fallen with some of the Guardians into disrepute, and a statement has more than once been made that they are not required, and a proposal made