This is one of
the beauties of the hut system. It consumes a big area, but it is all
on one level--the ground level. The patient on crutches can go anywhere
without fear of tripping, the patient in a wheeled chair can propel
himself anywhere, the orderlies can push wheeled stretchers or
dinner-wagons anywhere. Our visitor for C 13, having escaped from the
back of the Scottish baronial building, emerges into a vista of covered
corridors, wooden-floored, galvanised-iron roofed. It is a heartbreaking
vista to the poor woman who has had no bus-fare and is burdened by a
baby in arms. It is a vista which seems to have no end. Corridor
branches out of corridor--A Corridor, B Corridor, C Corridor, D
Corridor, each with its perspective of doors opening into wards; and
shorter corridors leading to store-rooms and the like. But the patient
or orderly who has dwelt in a hospital where, though distances are
shorter, staircases are involved--or where every trifling
coming-and-going of goods or stretchers necessitates the manipulation of
a lift--blesses those level, smooth corridors, with their facile access
to any ward, to operating theatres, kitchens, stores, X-ray room,
massage department, etc., and their stepless exit into the open air.

Looked at from outside, a hut-ward is--to the aesthetic eye--a hideous
structure. Knowing what it stands for, the science, the tenderness and
the fundamental civilisation which it represents, we may descry, behind
its stark geometrical outlines, a real nobility and beauty. Entering a
typical hut-ward you behold thirty beds, fifteen on each side of the
room. Between each pair of beds is a locker in which the patient stows
his belongings. (Woe betide him if his locker is not kept neat!) In the
central aisle of the room are the Sister's writing-table, certain other
tables, chairs, and two coke stoves for heating purposes in winter. The
floor is carpetless, and maintained in a meticulous state of high gloss
by means of daily polishings. At a height of a few feet from the floor,
the asbestos-lined walls cease and become windows. There is no gap in
the continuous line of windows all down each side of the ward--a special
type of window which, even when open, declines to allow rain to enter.
In consequence of these windows the ward is not only very well lit, but
also airy and odourless. When all the windows are open (which is the
case throughout the entire summer and generally the case in winter also)
the