A BADLY-EQUIPPED HOSPITAL

Press, Volume XLIV, Issue 6843, 30 August 1887, Page 6

A BADLY-EQUIPPED HOSPITAL

[By Telegraph.]

[from our correspondent.] AUCKLAND, August 27. At a meeting in the Athenasum last night Dr. Gudler dealt with the spread of various epidemics. During the last two months they had 145 cases of scarlet fever, 111 of typhoid, 13 of diphtheria. The value of the new fever ward was proved by the '•■ tact that out of 01 cases of typhoid there was only one of death. The lecturer then took the excessive mortality of the district, and charged the city authorities with being responsible for it by their negligence in the matter of drainage. From this point the doctor went on to condemn the Hospital Board for acting in defiance of the skilled advice of the visiting staff. He said that the effect of the appointment of a house surgeon, and the abolition of the visiting staff, would be to convert the Hospital into a poor law infirmary, throwing the management of the whole sick into the hands of two medical men alone. The staff had applied vainly again and again for instruments, and he declared that there was no other hospital in New Zealand where the staff had to work with such makeshift instruments. They had no proper forceps for amputation, no water beds, not a galvanic battery that would work, not a knife that would cut. There was also a want of accommodation for patients. The cancer ward of the hospital was absurdly small, and now the Board had given £150 for a building which was quite useless for treatment for fevers, and contemplated moving it close to the hospital. Could folly do more. The Board also had neglected to 'build a proper mortuary, and had closed the maternity ward. They were constantly trying to reduce the number of nurses, and tne dispensary was to be done away with. The dootor devoted the balance of his paper to an explanation of various systems or hospital management in England.