HOW AUSTRALIANS RUN A MODEL HOSPITAL.

Colonist, Volume LVII, Issue 13743, 5 April 1915, Page 8

HOW AUSTRALIANS RUN A MODEL HOSPITAL.

(By Frank Hillier.)

On the topmost part of the. northern clift's of Whr.nreux there stands an hotel, the "Hotel de Golf," a red, rambling building in tho centre of a smalt brood of smaller erections, like a hen among her chickens, open to all the winds that blow, a place to resort to when goititi'i, well is tho chief object in'life. Last summer it was filled with people in this condition; this winter it is tstill. full, and for the same reason, but the circumstances are different. On August 29th. a train stopped on i.ha line which runs, through the settlement which served formerly for the Transport of bricks and mortar. From it there- descended a hundred and twenty men and women, who brought with them strange bags and bundles. They took that hotel in hand and made it, in the space of a few hours literally, a hcspital of good isooth. Now it is known as tho "A. V. H.," the Australian Voluntary Hospital, a triumph of overseas enterprise and inventiveness.

It is in keeping with the tradition of vigour and ready resource which is so much the pride, while the qualities are characteristic, of our overseas cousins that within twelve hours of tho arrival of the train aforementioned there were a hundred and forty-seven stretchercases being treated in the new hospital, which had been in the meantime cleared, cleaned, fitted, and furnished from the first bedstead to the last towel. The authorities wouH have made no complaint had "they ■taken a week over the business. What the Australians lacked they made or invented. An operating theatre wais, of course, needed. The most suitable room having been decided on, it was a question df workmen to transform it. There were none. The men were busy lifting and carrying, so three sisters rolled up their sleeves and "turned to" themselves. They scraped every inch of paper off the walls at a rate which would, have caused a paper hanger to faint. Then the 1 attest sister of the three mounted on an improvised scaffold and manipulated the whitewash brush. A case for the instruments was improvised from an exhibition case for chocolate which had formed part of the hotel fixtures, and still does duty. It was the spirit which enabled men to make homes out of nothing in virgin forests and construct smiling paradises with wildernesses as the sole material.

In the first seven days of tho theatre's existence seventy-nine serious operations were performed in it. But other marvels wore performed in the twelve hours. Even the X-rays apparatus was installed and working, in charge of Mr Herschel Harris, wheso work in tin.-; department has beeti one of the chief factors in the great success which the Australian hospital has achieved. He invented one day a ■simple apparatus which has proved of the utmost value in examining X-rays negatives. It is a box one side of which consists of a ground-glass screen illuminated from within by an electric lamp. It is portable, so . that while the surgeon is operating he can refer to the X-rays negative cf the part on which he is at work. The screen is large enough for three large negatives to be examined at once.

The building is not a large cue, but jio skilfully has the space been omployed that 186 cases can be comfortably accommodated under normal circumstances, and I was assured -that if it were .necessary to take- another fifty the thing would be done. And it did not seem possible to doubt it. As it is, the hospital will soon be enlarged by the erection of an annexe cli&se by. The staff, which numbers 120, including tliirty-six nursing sisters, is accommodated in a building apart, so that once the spell of duty is over there is a r:'mplete change of atmosphere and ■> •'. fronment available. The doctors ..fii-o housed in the golf clubhouse a few hundred yards away, and here .also is the bacteriological laboratory, for the: ■> is nothing which this wonderful '-•■

equipped hospital lacks. Such a lab •- i\O)vy, nbcut which alone an nrti lo might- bo written, is almost indispensvible to a "war hospital" for testing for

such germs as those of tetanus, gangrene, enteric, tho latter being one of the most difficult as well as one of the most important diseases to diagnose. It is one of the discoveries in a bacteriological laboratory that gangrenous wounds must be treated by being kept open, because tho • bacillus is aerobic, that is to say, it cannot live in,air —so stitches are now taboo, and the wound, swabbed with hydrogen peroxide and irrigated with carbolic or saline solution, is kept open till the bacilli have been destroyed. Tho bacteriological laboratory will show at once whether a wound is infected or not, and with what, and the treatment is determined accordingly. As regards the outside equipment of the hospital, there are available nearly fifty motor-ambul-ances. The personnel is almost entirely Aus- , tralian. The medical staff all volunteered at a meeting of Australian doctors who were in London when the war broke out. The commanding officer is Lieutenant-Colonel Eames, who carried out the organisation of the hospital, his second being Lieutenant-Colonel Home. Both officers hold their commissions in Australia in ihe Royal Army Medical Corps. The medical staff consists of Sir Alexander MaeCormiek, Mr. T. Thring, and Major Dick. All the nursing sisters, with very few exceptions, are Australians, and it is in keeping with the general spirit which pervades the A.V.H. that some of them actually paid their own faros from Australia to come and o'Fer their services; and they all work with soloiuiul energy^ which may be imagined fro in the fact that on one creasio'i work w/nt in continuously in. tlii"1 oporaliucc theatro t'r:rn. 6 o'clock one mon>:::.y iill 2 a.m. r,r. iho following da.-. The v.'i'.:>lc: i.-si :iikt:;;;: ;m vie Lo-spital shows .sij^r;..-: ni' thl.i iiiiMuosJuiko, efficient disposition, coupled, of course, with that nioiUHf iMgennity cf tho colonial, j More is a now splint which permits of j the dressing of a wound without the necessity of removing the splint; there is a simple apparatus for tho exten-j sion of a wounded arm. "if you have-i n't got a thing, invent it" seems to be the motto; and in war surgery so many unusual .situations arise that the faculty is ef sevenfold value.

As the staff and methods are Aura-! t.ralinn, so is the money; the donations have been on a, generous scale, and this is only one of the respects in which the Australian hospital is in the first flight of tho many voluntary institutions which are doing such yeoman service.