On hospital organisation : with special reference to the organisation of hospitals for children / by Charles West.

  • West, Charles, 1816-1898.
Date:
1877
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On hospital organisation : with special reference to the organisation of hospitals for children / by Charles West. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    medical grounds that a case is unfit for hospital relief, the stewards of the public money, who administer the affairs of the institution, are to be precluded from determining-, with the approval of the governors, for what social class the hospital is intended. It is more than probable that a few words of explanation from the committee as to the reasons for the regulation would have satisfied all but a very small minority of the subscribers. Lastly, complaints were made in a few exceptional instances of the inquisitorial nature of the questions put by the agents of the Charity Organisation Society, though it was universally allowed that on the whole their work had been done with both wisdom and gentleness, and the spirit in which they were instructed to act was that of endeavouring to admit all applicants save those manifestly unfit. In many cases, indeed, these agents stated to the secretary exceptional circumstances with reference to many of the applicants which justified the admission for permanent treatment of persons whom the strict letter of the law would have excluded. The bearing of many regulations is not immedi- ately apparent, and the essential difference between the position of the officers of the Charity Organisation Society when called on merely to verify a statement, or when required to institute an entirely new investiga- tion, does not perhaps lie on the surface. The patients scarcely ever demurred to answering the inquiry as to their husbands' earnings when put to them at the hospital, where they were sure of receiving, once at any rate, the advice they sought, and invariably a few words of kindly explanation got over all difficulty. The case, however, was widely altered when they were referred elsewhere, and called on to reply to questions