by illnesses for which they could not have been prepared, and for which their means will not command the requisite treatment. We have all acquiesced in this, and have helped to support the County Infirmary, or the City Hospital or Dispensary nearest to our place of residence. By a movement, not of the economists but the neighbours and friends of the poor in two or three villages, we now see even some hospitals taken out of the short list of unexceptionable or inevitable charities, and placed firmly on a self-supporting basis. This is probably owing to the strong natural demand for the new institution.
Those of my readers who have lived for a shorter or longer time in a rural neighbourhood, have probably seen something of the distress and difficulty caused by any bad accident to a labouring man, or by a long illness in a small cottage. A poor fellow is reported to have fallen from the top of a rick, or to have got stabbed with a pitchfork, or to have tumbled when asleep from the shafts of his master’s waggon, or to have been jammed against a gatepost, or to have received a slash from a scythe. A boy out bird-nesting has trusted to a rotten branch, and has been found lying groaning with a broken leg. A cottager’s wife has scalded her arm on washing-day; or the baby has pulled over a bowl of hot water. I once saw a child who had been ferociously bitten in the cheek by a horse; and the mother’s agitation about getting him to the Infirmary was a thing not to be forgotten. There is, at County Hospitals, a pretty regular and very large percentage of accidents by firearms. All over the kingdom, lovers or playmates are always saying, “I’ll shoot you,” believing the gun not to be loaded, but finding that it was loaded. The incessant repetition of this kind of accident is, like the mischief of riding upon the shaft of a waggon, something astonishing. Then, there is the bursting of bad guns, or a stray shot from an awkward sportsman. There are little explosions from blowing up wasps’ or ants’ nests. There are troubles from runaway horses, or angry bulls, and risks from bathing or sliding in or on deep ponds. Till now, the sufferers have had the alternative of being laid up in their own poor homes, where there is no room, nor convenience, nor quiet by day or night, or being carried to the County Hospital. In some parts of England there is a third plan for those who have, or fancy they have, broken a bone. These travel any number of miles, over hill and dale, over good roads or rough stony tracks, to “the bone-setter.” I need not describe the journey, nor the effects of it on the tortured and fevered patient. In the best case,—that of immediate removal to the County Hospital,—the evil of the transit is very great. No one who has stood at the gate of an Infirmary on receiving-days, or when a casualty case is brought in, can have any doubt of the mischief and misery caused by the journey. In cases of disease it is a trial which the sick are ill able to bear to be separated from family and friends, and laid down among strangers to endure the days of pain and the sleepless nights they have to go through. It is not wonderful that country doctors everywhere complain that there is no getting diseased or hurt people to go into hospital.
At last, the idea occurred to somebody, that every place large enough to have a resident doctor might have its own hospital; and within the last three or four years the experiment has been tried in several villages with such unmixed success and satisfaction to everybody, that there can be no rational doubt of the extension of the plan over the whole kingdom. The Report of the Cranley (Surrey) Village Hospital is before me, signed first by Mr. Bradshaw, the present Chairman of the London Farmers’ Club.
After reading this Report, we know enough to see how to set about such a plan in our respective neighbourhoods. A house is taken which has room for six beds at least, which is in a healthy situation, and in wholesome condition, and near the doctor’s abode. A woman is put into the house to keep it clean, and do the work of it. A trained nurse—one of Miss Nightingale’s band, if possible—has the charge of the patients; and when there are none, she attends the women of the village in their lying-in, or in illness, on the payment of a certain fee. The hospital-patient pays a weekly sum, fixed, according to his circumstances, by his employer and the managers; and it does not appear that any difficulty is made about this. Probably it is on the whole an evident saving to the poor man to have his home relieved of the burden, and to have the cure so much accelerated as it is by the advantages of the hospital. The doctors are well pleased to have their most anxious patients close at hand, and under the most favourable conditions. It is a great change to the humane surgeon from having to ride far and wide, only to give orders which cannot or will not be obeyed, and to see the patients suffering from the noise of children, the intrusions of neighbours, the heat of the living-room, or the closeness of the bed-room, and from the miserable cookery of the cottage where the whole family has to live on nine or ten shillings a-week. Instead of this, the kind-hearted doctor finds his patient lying in quiet and comfort, duly physicked and daintily fed, under the charge of a qualified nurse, and of trustees, of whom the clergyman is always one. There is wine in the cellar, there are good things in the larder, bundles of old linen come in, and comforts for the bedridden; and the beds and easy-chairs are adapted for the treatment of broken limbs and the ease of the feeble frame. Wife or child may come in for a gossip at fixed times, and the only restraint is that they may not bring in food or drink without the doctor’s leave. Kind ladies, with well-known faces, often look in: and all the news of the village, and some from London and Foreign parts, finds its way into the hospital. The place is far more cheerful and familiar than the great Infirmary, and far more comfortable than the home which has no accommodation for sickness. Is it not natural that such an institution should succeed? and will it not be strange if it does not spring up all over the country? At Cranley, there were 23 admissions the first year (1859), and as many the next: and the number increased to 30 in 1861, nearly the whole being cases which could not