A hospital in the making. A history of the National Hospital for the Paralysed and Epileptic (Albany Memorial) 1859-1901.

  • Rawlings, B. Burford.
Date:
1913
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: A hospital in the making. A history of the National Hospital for the Paralysed and Epileptic (Albany Memorial) 1859-1901. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by UCL Library Services. The original may be consulted at UCL (University College London)

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    * enlarged means are, as they have been always, of the essence of the hospital's claim upon the benevolent, and call for untiring reiteration. The circumstances are stimulating, and some, at least, of the incitement to enter upon exalted efforts, and to accomplish new objects, will actuate the workers of to-day, once they arc warmed to their task, as it actuated their predecessors primed by the responsive- ness of parentage. The evil period of strife has passed, and whatever the convictions concerning hospital politics of those who laboured in the years gone by, their affection for the hospital they brought into being is not dead. Stirring times are in store for the voluntary system of hospital relief. Signs are not wanting that the hour is coming when pretensions in respect of hospi- tals now boldly put forward will be challenged, and in an age all too democratic and subversive, the gratuitous assumption of a professional property in hospitals, which, carefully examined, possesses no titular justification, and not even a sentimental excuse, is fated to rough handling. It will go the way of many better things, and in its fall may drag down a little we might like to preserve. If the fiery ordeal, thought by many to be in store for the voluntary hospitals, is encountered, let us pray the spirit of philanthropy will not take flight, even though it must hover about them on singed and sullied wings. No greater misfortune could be suffered by the sick poor than the severance of hos- pital work from its religious and benevolent bases.