A NEW ZEALAND ABROAD. HOSPITAL WORK IN SCOTLAND

Otago Witness, Issue 2651, 4 January 1905, Page 29

A NEW ZEALAND ABROAD. HOSPITAL WORK IN SCOTLAND

MISSION TROUBLES IN INDIA. ili.°s Helen Inglis, who returned ta Christchurch last week after five yes?s* • Home study and practice of nursing, declared most patriotically to a representative of the Christchuroh Press h6r preference for the New Zealand climate. "An American has described the Edinburgh seasons as ' nine months' winter and three months of very cold weather.' I don't want to be hard on de.gr old Scotland, but really there is no climate to boast of. Edinburgh especially is a depressing place. It took at least a year to get used to the grey town, grey streets, grey houses, and grey people. Scotland is all very well for a short holiday, when you can put up with the lack of sunshine, but give me New Zealand to work in." New Zealanders in Edinburgh have acquired the name of being especially hard workers. Alias Inglis recalls that one vacation, when she was engaged in the outpatient department of the Royal Infirmary, all the students who remained on duty under the different chiefs, without a single exception, were colonials. Nearly four^ years spent at the Royal Infirmary gave Miss Inglis a thorough insight into every branch of hospital work, and she speaks highly of the kindness shown by doctors and matrons in securing that she should have every opportunity of mastering the details of management, as well as of practical nursing. This hospital is the modern .development of that "Old Infirmary" immortalised- by Henley in 1873-75. Henley mmself might have appreciated the old stair-woman who would make report to Miss Ingiis that she had " cleaned the room i *J? c rßottenr Rotten Rays." Professor Chiens and .Professor Annandale are visitino- surgeons, amongst many others, and Professors Eraser, Greenfield, and Simpson are on -the medical staff. As compared" with the .London Hospital, the infirmary may seem managed on less expensive lines; thore is nothing like their Finsen light department for instance, to astound the visitor, but its excellence of tone is remarked throughout, and the record shows marvels of successiul -and economical arrangement H^ P€ ™ mg ° f ree montQ s' later work in the Glasgow Maternity Hospital, Miss inglis touched on some experiences of slum service. ' A call comes at any hour of the day or night, and the nurse goes, often to the lowest streets, where a policeman could not dare to pass alone. It is won^ derlul what a nurse's uniform can do " blumming is made a" trifle wholesomer than in old days by the municipal improvements. There is very seldom a house without water laid on." Glasgow ' electric trams are splendid, going far and fast at very low cost. "You can go a long way for a halfpenny." Miss Inglis tells- an amusing story of a section in Edinburgh which changed its fare from a halfpenny to -a penny, and doctors, nurses and all concerned' at the hospital air one© took to walking Tip .the hill-~rather than countenance the exorbitant demands of a penny -tram! "At the Glasgow Maternity Hospital, Mr" Jardine, the great surgeon, is leading ' obstetrician, and the nurses in" training owe much to his lectures. - Many people will be interested to hear of Miss Jessie Inglis, to' whom her sister paid a .visit on the way- back to New Zealand, coming in on her at a rath&r exciting time. She is now attached to the mission at Erode, in the Coimbatore district, India, where work has been brought almost to a stop by pJague. So many deaths had taken place the people had left in panic, until a population of 30,000 came down to not more than six, and the mission school, which usually counted at least 50 scholars, assembled with only half a dozen boys. The death rate had come. down also to less -than one a day, but as the inhabitants ventured to return the record was rising again to five or six deaths a day. . The last news was that the mission's milkman had got the plague, and, as his house was just the other side of the compound, this seemed bringing the excitement rather close. Miss Inglis is not surprised at any spread of the epidemic amongst the Erode streets. , " Wee huts on each side of a narrow road, close, dirty, disease-fostering places — from the edges of the low roofs , hang bananas and other foods, and exactly 1 below them runs a terrible foetid drain." ' English residents do all they can, and Mr Brough. the head of the mission, is also the official sanitary commissioner. His work in plague- times changes from the | giving of religious instruction to the pulling down of huts, marking infected places, and commanding fumigation parties. Miss Inglis's visit was paid in the cool weather, of which she remarks: """The cool weather " in India is quite unbearable, if you have anything to do," and she makes the very frequent reflection of the returned colonial : "All the time I was away, in Scotland or elsewhere, I have felt I should like to_ come back and tell New Zealanders how grateful they should be to live m this fresh, clear, sunshiny world, instead of m the crowded cities of the Old Country.