A letter to the vice-chairman of the Board of Management of the Radcliffe Infirmary on the questions to be considered at the meetings summoned for May 17 & 31, 1866 / [Henry W. Acland].

  • Acland, Henry W. (Henry Wentworth), 1815-1900.
Date:
1866
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A letter to the vice-chairman of the Board of Management of the Radcliffe Infirmary on the questions to be considered at the meetings summoned for May 17 & 31, 1866 / [Henry W. Acland]. 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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    accrue. But I have yet to learn that a Special Epidemic Hospital is needed either at the Badcliffe Infirmary or elsewhere. It is a grave thing to commence such a work, especially if the want is imaginary. I main- tain that the existing General Hospital, containing now only about 130 beds, (it should not have so many in the present building,) standing on four acres of ground, should on all known principles of Hospital accommodation easily, and economically, and advan- tageously expand, so as to meet the Hospital wants of the district. Easily, because there is room; eco- nomically, because there is already the plant, the administration, the staff, the chapel; advantageously, because to add nurses, other resident officers, or more honorary officers, is not only much simpler, but more likely to increase the efficiency of the whole, than the creation and maintenance of a separate establishment. It will be time for the present Hospital to ask for relief from its present work, when it has reached 250 or 300 beds. In a day when Hospitals are happily being in- creased in number and in kind, when Counties have them which had them not, when Tillage Hospitals are springing up, and Workhouse Infirmaries are im- proving, no old General Hospital, except a first-class one, will keep its former prestige. I speak of ordinary times, and ordinary epidemic diseases. The Board of Guardians is bound to meet extraordinary Epidemics. Professor Rolleston has calculated that there are 200 cases of Fever in Oxford annually. Twenty-five to thirty beds would probably take the whole of those that would be induced to come in. Good wards would soon be popular among the people. I never saw a Fever patient recover in the Hospital, who did not