Special report by Dr. Gairdner to the Magirstrates' Committee, on the proposed temporary fever hospital in Nassau Court, Anderston.

  • William Tennant Gairdner
Date:
1865
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Special report by Dr. Gairdner to the Magirstrates' Committee, on the proposed temporary fever hospital in Nassau Court, Anderston. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    it can be shewn that no real ground for panic exists, the Magistrates are surely justified in expecting that the assistance of all reasonable men will be given, not to minister to an un- reasoning sense of danger, but rather to allay it. As regards the Anderston Church and Schools, I think it better here also to let facts speak for themselves, rather than to adduce complicated arguments or multiplied authorities; although it may be mentioned, in passing, that the authorities are all, without exception, on the side of the Magistrates; inasmuch as they all concur in assigning a very limited range to the infecting power of fever, unless in confined air, or when carried by direct human intercourse. So far as my ovm observation is concerned, this fact is as well ascertained as any fact of the kind can possibly be; for, in the course of an experience of very many hundreds, per- haps some thousands, of cases of typhus fever, treated in hospitals and in private dwelHngs, I never heard of a well- authenticated case in which epidemic fever was propagated from one detached building to another, except through the medium of persons, or articles of clothing, &c., can-ied from the one to the other more or less directly. But as this inquiry is a rather complicated one, and could scarcely be popularly stated in a perfectly impartial manner, I prefer to appeal to one or two simple cases, in which the conditions of the pro- posed Hospital in Anderston have been accidentally imitated as closely as can be expected in instances not made for the purpose. The existing Fever Hospital in Glasgow stands so close to the New Surgical Hospital, that it was even proposed, at one time, to connect the two by means of covered gangways on each flloor, so as to convert the half of the Fever Hospital into an addition to the Surgical House. I do not mention this proposal otherwise than as an illustration; and I do not say that, in the abstract, this close proximity is desirable; but if the very close neighbourhood of a Fever Hospital, containing from 150 to 200 beds, and frequently, during the last two years, occupied to an extent far greater than was prudent according
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