Fresh air treatment in hospital wards / by W. Gilman Thompson.

William Gilman Thompson

Date:: 1907

Credit: Fresh air treatment in hospital wards / by W. Gilman Thompson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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$! ■I. \ - JAh /^/ FRESH AIR TREATMENT IN HOSPITAL WARDS.* By W. GILMAN THOMPSON. M.D., NEW YORK. VISITING PHYSICIAN TO THE PRESBYTERIAN AND BELI EVUE HOSPITALS. The general medical hospital ward as exemplified in most of the hospitals in this city is a most uncom- fortable and irrational place for the proper care of the sick. In the same long, narrow room are crowded a miscellaneous collection of ailments, all submitted to identical conditions and surroundings, without the slightest attempt at appropriate adapta- tion of environment. The pneumonia patient, with a temperature of 105 ° F., sorely in need of fresh, cool air, lies in the next bed to the uremic patient with a subnormal temperature and high tension pulse, who needs warm air and a hot pack! The typhoid fever patient, with a racking headache and photophobia, lies facing a glare of sunlight, which is doubtless beneficial to the man with per- nicious anemia in the next bed (because the trained nurses think the ward looks better with the shades all at the same height). The neurasthenic with insomnia lies next to the patient with alcoholic cirrhosis and delirium tremens, who keeps the en- tire ward awake most of the night. The conva- lescent patient has nowhere to go during the day for a change of air and scene, and the poor old *A paper read before the New York Academy of Medi- cine, January 17, 1907. Copyright. William Wood A Company$

Fresh air treatment in hospital wards / by W. Gilman Thompson.

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