HOW GUTS HOSPITAL IS MANAGED.

Otago Witness, Issue 2252, 29 April 1897, Page 49

HOW GUTS HOSPITAL IS MANAGED.

The total number of out-patients attended at Guy's in one year is considerably over 150,000, while the in-patienta accommodated duriDg the same period exceed 6500. £40,000 is the sum spent annually in healing this enormous army of sufferers. The doctors who practise at this veritable citadel of the eick are numbered by tbe dozeD, while the nursing staff comprises no .fewer than 150. It will be readily conceived, therefore, that to stem this tremendous tide of infirmity, to attend to all these lives, scores of which are trembling in the balance, is no slight undertaking. The whole of the internal administration of Guy's Hospital is under the general supervision of one man, and that the superintendent. If anything goes, amiss he has to reckon" with the Houee Committee. The medical department, of course, ia under the medical and surgical staff. ALWAYS EEADY FOB EMERGENCIES. It is the aim of a hospital to be prepared for any emergency ; if 700 patients are awaiting succour, treatment is not denied to the 7013fc. Guy's ia open day and night. Situated in one of the poorest district of London, oases come in every hour of the day and night. It is a matter of life or death in these institutions. No wonder that the house surgeon is becoming a stranger to sleep, for he has to act with the greatest prompitude. A reckless window-cleaner has just fallen from a high ledge. It ib touch-and-go with him. He may only hava 10 minutes to live ; if the surgeon on duty is sharp, his life may be spared. Accordingly everything is done with extraordinary quickness. Bub how on earth it ia all managed I don'fc pretend to explain. Maimed patients are brought iv by the half dczan sometimes. A little while ago eight men were carried in on stretchers with their heads well-nigh blown off— the result of a gas explosion. The stretcher is a familiar object at Gny>, because the hospital is in close proximity to two railways and the river. 'Operations are takicgplaco throughout the livelong day and "night. A cab conveys an old man who has fallen out of a train. The house surgeon and two or three dressers are soon at his side. It is a bad case. Splints and dressings are applied, and tbe shapeless ' mass is carried to the operating theatre. By the time the surgical instruments have been^, immersed in a pan of boiling water, so aB to free them from all traces of former operations, the assistant surgeon appears upon the scene. A brief consultation between the new comer and the house surgeon ensues, and amputation of both legs is decided on. The patient is acae3thetised, and off come his legs. The average stay of a patient in the hospital is 25 da} 8. This is a rough description of the career of a ease. The out-patients' department of a great hospital is a spectacle not easily forgotten. Here on some days you may see 500 persons jostling one another at one time, the doctors and their assistants ruahing hither and thither as if demented. j A MOTLEY CROWD INDEED 1 Pale, haggard women, crestfallen and re1 duced gentlemen, honest working men im-

patient for the time when they will be enabled to get to work again, gin-sodden rogues who are capable of drinking the hospital medicine when their favourite potion is out of reach. No water for them ; it's too contaminated for their delicate interior. Here again is O'Reilly's voluble "old woman "; she's got a black eye — her twelfth this season — a mark of affection and esteem presented by her loving spouse. And thare, I declare, is the venerable O'Reilly himself, arrayed in his best plum-coloured garments, which net off his flattened nose to a nioety. Bat you must come on Monday for oases of assault; and battery. Black Monday is Black-eye Monday, when folk come to repair the damage of Saturday night. Here are a few extracts concerning Monday patients which I cullad from the case boot :— Fell into the river Cut forehead Black eye Lacerated wound of Out head scalp Scalp wound (alcohol) j Cut lip Dislocation of thumb I Black eye Black eye I Horse bite I Anxious mother. The latter is a new way of describing a doting parent who brings a child with nothing the matter with her. THE SADDEST SIDE OF HOSPITAL LIFE is that which is unseen. Dsath, unceasing in its vigilance, hovers incessantly over a large hospital. Few inmates, however, are made aware of its presence. When life begins to ebb, when the heart grows weak and the i pulse has lost its mechanism, the gentle nurses bring a screen and hide the dying patient from view. Then, when all is over and the last sad offices to the dead are performed, the body is taken away to the mortuary. In the grey of the morning a patient wakes and wonders at the empty bed, so quietly has it all been done. Eight persons die on the averaga avery week at Gny's ; 578 died last year, and 120 inquests were held. " The trying part of it all is when a wif o comes in and suddenly hears that she is a widow," the superintendent remarked to me. " Intelligence has reaohed her to the effect that her husband has met with an accident ; she hurries to tb.B hospital, and then — well, you can imagine how she feels on being confronted with a corpse. "As a rale, the first thing the relatives want Is the certificate of death, so as to enable them to obtain the insurance money. The poor are always horrified at the prospect of their friends being buried in a pauper's grave. Bub aB a matter offacfc, only about 10 of the 500 who die here in the course of every 12 months are laid to rest in a oommon grave. When friends cannot afford either to move or to bury the body we always render them whatever pecuniary assistance we can." Thßy have some queer cases at Gny's. A lively gentlemau down Sevenoaks way once thought to sleep tha night with only the moon and the stars to keßp him company. He selected a nice soft ditch — the nearest approach to a feather bed he oould find — and throw himself down. In tbe morning bo didn't know himaelf. Tbo frost had robbed him of both legs and one of his arms. A few figures concerning