e cross-corridors are
twelve feet wide and twenty feet high, and are roofed with glass; The
corridor on each side is a framework of walls of glazed brick,
arched over head, and divided into six segments. In each segment is
a separate, light, elegant removable ward, constructed of glass and
iron, twelve feet high, fourteen feet long, and ten feet wide. The
cubic capacity of each ward is 1,680 feet. Every patient who is ill
enough to require constant attendance has one of these wards entirely
to himself, so that the injurious influences on the sick, which are
created by mixing up, in one large room, the living and the dying;
those who could sleep, were they at rest, with those who cannot
sleep, because they are racked with pain; those who are too nervous
or sensitive to move, or cough, or speak, lest they should disturb
others; and those who do whatever pleases them:--these bad influences
are absent.
The wards are fitted up neatly and elegantly. At one end they open
into the corridor, at the other towards a verandah which leads to a
garden. In bright weather those sick persons, who are even confined to
bed, can, under the direction of the doctor, be wheeled in their beds
out into the gardens without leaving the level floor. The wards are
warmed by a current of air made to circulate through them by the
action of a steam-engine, with which every hospital is supplied, and
which performs such a number of useful purposes, that the wonder is,
how hospital management could go on without the engine.
If at any time a ward becomes infectious, it is removed from its
position and is replaced by a new ward. It is then taken to pieces,
disinfected, and laid by ready to replace another that may require
temporary ejection.
The hospital is supplied on each side with ordinary baths, hot-air
baths, vapour baths, and saline baths.
A day sitting-room is attached to each wing, and every reasonable
method is taken for engaging the minds of the sick in agreeable and
harmless pastimes.
Two trained nurses attend to each corridor, and connected with the
hospital is a school for nurses, under the direction of the medical
superintendent and the matron. From this school, nurses are provided
for the town; they are not merely efficient for any duty in the
vocation in which they are always engaged, either within the hospital
or out of it, but from the care with which they attend to their own
personal cleanliness, and the plan they pursue of c
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