The hospitals / [W.I. Bicknell].

  • Bicknell, W. I
Date:
1847
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The hospitals / [W.I. Bicknell]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    OO T -17/ for the cure and prevention of contagious fevers. It but too often happens that cases of fever are neglected in their earlier stages, so that the disease has run almost to the utmost extre- mity, before the patient’s removal to the hospital. This circumstance alone will account for the great mortality which happens in cases of fever. Where the disorder is taken in time, recovery is almost certain; but, when neg- lected, the mortality is as great as one in eight, or even as one in six. No situation can be better suited for the purpose than the one chosen. It is only a wonder that the hospital should continue to be conducted on so comparatively small a scale, the accommodation being limited to about one hundred and forty patients. Hospital for Consumption and Diseases of the Chest, Chelsea.—This important institution is but newly established, and under the immediate patronage of the queen. It may appear extraordinary that prior to the opening of this hospital there was not, throughout the wide and populous city and its vicinity, a single public receptacle for consump- tive patients. This will appear still more extraordinary when It is recollected “ that consumption, in its various forms, is emphatically the disease of our climate, and our country. All statistical accounts—all tables of mortality—show that, while other maladies slay their thousands, tens of thousands are swept away by the silent but sure advance of this most insi- dious foe.”—(Bishop of Salisbury), And not only was there this want of an asylum for such cases, but in our general hospitals, no sooner did the disease manifest itself than the unfortunate sufferer was expelled from their walls. Thus were consumptive patients compelled to go forth and die. Neither