ALLEGED HOSPITAL NEGLECT.

Otago Witness, Issue 3215, 27 October 1915, Page 51

ALLEGED HOSPITAL NEGLECT.

A member of the Australian Expeditionary Force, writing to his parents in Dunedin, makes a serious,complaint regarding the conduct of one of the English military hospitals in Egypt. The writer of the letter was wounded through the explosion of a Turkish bomb in the trench in which he was. He did not take much notice of the wound for a week, until his leg became unbearably sore. He was then ordered down to the Field Ambulance base, where he was promptly placed under chloroform and the offending piece of bomb was removed from against his bone. As the wound had become septic, he was placed on a hospital ship, which left for Alexandria two days later. The treatment on board ship by Indian doctors and orderlies, with Australian nurses, was splendid. ‘'Our Australian doctors,” the writer proceeds, “ are excelicnt, but the English doctors seem to think they are too much above us colonials to trouble about us. On arrival at Alexandria I was placed in an Imperial hospital in which about 2000 English ‘ Tommies ’ were patients. I was there from Tuesday of last week until Monday of this week. Without going into details, it is sufficient to say that a doctor or nurse never looked at my wound from the time of arrival to time of departure. The wound was dressed by an Egyptian student. On Monday I asked to bo sent to an Australian convalescent home, and still, without looking at my wound, the doctor consented. Thank God ! Here we are treated like lords.”