HOSPITAL OPERATING THEATRES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLI, Issue 12555, 22 April 1904, Page 6

HOSPITAL OPERATING THEATRES.

POINTS FROM SYDNEY AND MELBOURNE. £BT TELEGIIArH.—OWN' CORRESPONDENT.] OuRISTcnuKCH, Thursday. Mr. Geo. Payling, a member of the City Council and of the Hospital Board, has just returned from a visit to Australia, in the course or which he paid some attention to municipal and hospital matters. He went over the Melbourne Hospital, and as the Christchurch Hospital Board has just erected a new operating theatre he was especially interested in this department of the Melbourne institution.. His observations showed him nothing which he could recommend the Christchurch Board to adopt. There were large windows framed with woodwork, of which the wood had shrunk, leaving fissures all round, to which some medical men objected strongly as admitting dust and microbes. There was a tile floor. The Christchurch. operating" theatre lias a floor pufc down with pure cement, which, while it affords a very smooth surface, is always likely to crack. A large number of operations are conducted at the Melbourne Hospital, and the institution has been most successful in regard to the cases taken in hand. The Sydney Hospital, which has 433 beds, and accommodates annually an immense numbei of patients, impressed Mr. Payling as probably the best in Australasia. The operating theatre there had a marble floor, and the walls were formed of opalite tiles. It looked very pleasant and clean, but the medical staff complained that the extreme whiteness is very trying to the eyes. Retinal purple appear©! to be the colour most favoured for the interior of.an operating theatre. The trouble with the marble floors was that the joins opened, and a number of slabs cracked, and in time the marble was liable to become all cracks and fissures. This was also the case with the opalite tiles. The theatre is washed out every day with sterilised water, and is afterwards shut up for twr hours. There are also two water motors by which pure air is drawn into the theatre through. a case resembling a meat safe with cotton wool on the inside of the fine wire screen to stop all germs. Two other motors, also worked by water-power, are used for pumping out the foul air, and so the theatre is kept beautifully clean and wholesome. Gas is installed as well as electricity, in case the electricity should fail. There are two glass roofs, one above the other, for the purpose of keeping out the dust. Every bandage applied is first put through a steriliser, as will soon be the practice in the Christchurch Hospital now that the new instruments have been obtained. Mr. Payling also inspected the Prince Alfred Hospital, just outside Sydney. The theatre there is not especially up to date at present, but an expenditure of about £70,000 is being made on a new wing, which will contain two theatre*, with concrete floors upstairs as well as clown. . To ensure that it will be entirely fireproof and fitted up in quite the most modern fashion, according to the directions of medical men who have recently been Home, the floor of the present theatre is of tiles. While in Sydney Mr. Payling saw a substance called arkilite, manufactured there by some special process. The city surveyor told him that it had been used for roading to a slight extent in Pitt-street, where a piece had been down for about two years, and had worn splendidly. Mr. Payling visited the place, and noticed that there was not a crack in the material, and that it had not shrunk in the least. He thought that if a floor free from cracks was wanted for an operating theatre this should be the very thing. He learned that it had been used most successfully in several private theatres in Sydney. There it only cost about 6s 6d a square yard, but in New Zealand, allowing for the fact that men would have to be specially ought over tc set it, the cost would be from about 10s to 13s.