LONDON HOSPITAL.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 15002, 25 May 1912, Page 5 (Supplement)

LONDON HOSPITAL.

THE DAILY ROUND.

East of Aldgate anyone will direct you to tho London Hospital. It is in. the East End, A landmark and a part of the very lives of the people. Within a radius of four or five miles there can bo. very- few families among a. population that the chairman has described as " the"' poorest on God's earth," that have not at one time or another turned in their need to the 'Orspital." •' '

There is no breathing space at the London. There are 820 patients in its wards. Their day begins early. For instance, the children—and incidentally the ■ London is our biggest children's hospital —are wideawake and washed soon after 4 a.m.

By six o'clock the porters, 70, of them, como on duty; and the work of provisioning and equipping the wards begins. ' First of all,'the coal supply for every ward is distributed from . the yard by the . boilerhouse, where the stokers arc on duty all round the.clock. . The milk' carts, deliver their 300 gallons of milk. The London needs every day 6"511b of bread, four hundredweights of potatoes—a long list of such impressive figures might be given, but it must suffice here to say that the' stores department works on wholesale lines.

Simultaneously the department pi the dispenser wakes into active life. The 'members of his staff begin by collecting all the prescription sheets. Some make up medicines, others fill up the big jars of antiseptic lotions, others replenish the pots of ointments and unguents. .•.-■,',..■•:..

The Dispenser.

The dispenser works on wholesale lines. In the course of 12 months ins requirements include six tons of malt,. 300 gallons of cod liver oil, five and a-half tons of Epsom ealts, and halt-a-ton of Ca&eara bark. He is also a. soda ■ water manufacturer in a fairly large way of business, with an output of, roughly, 1500 syphons a day. But it is when he conies'to deal, in ■ bandages, in. the. big dim stores' under the outpatients' department ,that he himself admite that he deals on really big lines. In the course of a year he sends out 15 tons of cottonwool, 40 miles of'line 18in 1 wide, and 150 miles of medicated gauze.

Before '12 o'clock ' the • house physicians and house surgeons, with their dressers, have gone their, rounds, and visited every one- of the 820 patients.

At noon punctually between 1000 and 1200 dinners are served from the kitchens on the topmost, floor, of the main building. By two o'clock.the benches in the big outpatients* .hall' are pretty full; there are here anything between 300 and 500 ; people —men, women,' and children. * Last year, so the annual report will show, 90,371 of tho sick poor- passed through * this hall.. The attendances amounted- to nearly ■ half-a-million.! . -.. '''■'••■•' ■'

Every day at one end of the hall,' two assistant physicians, at' the other two' assistant surgeons, are in attendance. Slowly the crowd filter through their consulting rooms-, and away, by the turnstiles of the dispensary. . . , ■ The Operating Theatre. Meantime there has been work at high pressure in the six big operating theatres. The- rjtual of asepsis lies heavy on the shoulders of the theatre superintendent and his staff in a hospital' where anything between 15 and. 20. major operations arc performed every day. Every instrument, every sponge," every ligature, even- shred of cottonwool that goes into the theatre, must be sterilised. '. Last year an untold number of tons of bandages, 10 miles of catgut, six of silk, and'a mile or so of kangaroo tendon had to be dealt with. Yet so perfect is tho system now that should anything .go wrong the cause can be traced back to the one particular jar of sponges •or ligatures. . .

The day oegins to close in. By six o'clock' meet of the patients have settled down for the night. The visitors to the wards have left. The Medical College has closed: and the students have lett for tho day. At eight o'clock the lights are lowered. The. "residents" make their final rounds, and by .10 o'clock crawl tired and footsore to bed. Even the"mam corridors and staircases seem to be deserted. But not for long. At 11 o'clock the regiment of scrubbers, some 50 strong, descends on the place.; they will be busy until 'o'clock the next morning. But in the main building there is silence, though at any hour of the night you may sec the tall figure of the chairman pacing silently along tho corridors. Another figure—a short, black-beared man in a black velvet skull-capalso flits down tho dim. corridors. He is tho' watcher, who, ac-, cording to the law, sits by the. bedside of tho Hebrew patients lest they die" alone;