NEW T.B. HOSPITAL

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 131, 1 December 1930, Page 11

NEW T.B. HOSPITAL

OPTING CEREMONY

DR. J. EWART'S WORK

Tho formal opening of. tho new Ewart .Tuberculosis Hospital took place this afternoon. Amongst those present were the chairman (Mr. P. Castle), the members of the Wellington Hospital Board, Dr. H. Bayldon Ewen, medical ;superintendent, and members of the medical nursing staffs. The new hospital, which cost £26,800, will aceeoinxuodate 65 patients'. Mr. C. M. Luke, who has been associated with hospital work in Wellington for the past fifty years, in declaring the new hospital open, gave an interesting sketch of the earlier histpry and the progress of the Wellington Hospital up to the present time. He spoke in eulogistic terms of the work of Dr. John Ewart, who was for twenty-one years medical superintendent, and who, he was pleased to say, was with them to-day as an honoured guest. Dr. John Ewart, in returning thanks for the complimentary remarks which ihad been made about his services, referred to the growth of the hospital irom the time he took charge in 18S9 till his resignation in 1910. When he /•was appointed superintendent there ■ was only accommodation for 80' pati- . ents; now there were 600 patients. Dr. Ewart said he was the- only resident medical officer in 1889. The honorary surgeons were Dr. W. E. Collins and Dr. W. Fell; Dr. Kemp and Dr. Cole ■were the physicians. The matron was Sirs* Hermansen, and the nursing staffnumbered only fifteen. The- late Hon. I\ H. Fraser was chairman, and Mr. Danks, Mr. Cook, the Rev. H. Van Staveren, and Mr.. C. M. Luke were members of the board. In those _~ days there were no specialists, and i- there was no laboratory. Dr. Ewart was the pathologist. The : out-patient waiting-room was also the "Operating theatre. Dr. John Ewart studied surgery un- . 3er Dr. Joseph Lister, afterwards Lord Lister, at Edinburgh in 187 G.! He was one of the students who waited upon Lord Lister and requested him to remain in Edinburgh instead of going to London. Following the epoch-making of Pasteur, Lister was then becoming famous in connection with the introduction of the system of antiseptic treatment in surgery. Lister, in ihis reply, said he was much against going to London, but he felt that it was ihis duty to go—-in order to persuade ■ the English medical profession to- adopt . the antiseptic system which had done bo much to abolish hospital gangrene, sepsis, .and other forms of blood poison- ' ing.