Appeal on behalf of the proposed Hospital for Scik Children in Edinburgh.

  • Royal Hospital for Sick Children (Edinburgh, Scotland)
Date:
[1859]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Appeal on behalf of the proposed Hospital for Scik Children in Edinburgh. 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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    ! so momentous would be a dereliction: to frustrate them in their due influence by frivolous objections, where they can- not be opposed by better founded obstacles, would have more the complexion of a crime. But it has been objected, as a fault to the kind of institu- tion now contemplated, that it seeks to separate the mother from her offspring; leaving the one to yearn for the object of her care and affection, and the other to pine drearily for home. Alas ! it is in that very home that the children whose fate we lament droop and die. Not every hearth is cheerful, and blessed with warmth, and light, and sweetness; and all sick pallets are not surrounded with noiseless glidings, smoothed with gentle hands, tended with mild whisperings, or watched by kindly, anxious faces. Where poverty is not hard and cold, and its touch blighting and fatal, or where ^affection is not bereft of comforts and powerless, who would interpose between the child and a mother’s love? But in the reverse of this, or in the worse alternative where vice ’.has grown familiar along with penury, and the mother’s heart iis callous for her offspring because she is hopeless for herself, who would not offer succour where the plea was the stronger ’because it was voiceless, and thus endeavour to mitigate the iparcnt’s trials or revive her fondness ? And even the usually lfrugal and contented, if humble, home is painfully changed Iby the intrusion of illness; for the narrow resources of the Ihousehold produce a double calamity, by at once throwing idiscomfort on the healthy and aggravation of suffering on tthe sick. This is not fancy, just as the infant ailings, and :deaths, and funerals, with their cost, and care, and compli- cated misery, are not fancy. It is to meet such distresses •only that a Sick Children’s Hospital presents its refuge; and it meed not offer its benefits to those who can command the means