Heating the Hospital Wards.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 6706, 20 November 1889, Page 2

Heating the Hospital Wards.

There seems to have been a large amount of miauiiderßtanding, if not of misrepreeentation, with regard to the hot water apparatus recently introduced at the Hospital. A few months ago the public was told that the apparatus was a complete failure — that, so far from being a benefit, it was a nuisance and a positive danger to tho patients, who -were sometimes cruelly tortured with cold through tho apparatus failing altogether to work, or sometimes almost suffocated with heat through the apparatus working too much. There was a vividness in the accounts which, were published that carried conviction to the minds of all but the most sceptical. Amongst the most sceptical, however, happened to bo the members of the House Committee, to whose management the matter had been entrusted. They believed that a firßt-class practical engineer, like Mr J. L. Scott, waa not by any means a likely person to blunder in the carrying out of a system for heating the wards, and they refused to condemn his system without giving it a fair trial. They doubted the absolute accuracy of the complaints which were made, and which found their way into print, and believed the assurances of their engineer that any irregularities which might have occurred were due, not to the system, but to the ignorance or wilfulnesa of the man in charge of it. They very naturally took this view of the matter, seeing, a3they did, that the complaints were invariably of what happened during the night. Everything went right during the day. Now, during the day a thoroughly competent man was in charge of the apparatus, but during the night the apparatus wa3 under the direction of the night watchman, who seems to have been by no means an expert. It was possible for him to cause excessive heat or to allow the temperature to fall, and he availed himself of his possibilities. The apparatus is now always under competent management, and Mr F. Jones, at the last meeting of the Hospital Board, very emphatically expressed his satisfaction with Mr J. L. Scott's system . Mr Jones' opinion was, it will be noticed, the opinion of the other members of the Board.