The Medical Committee of the Charing-Cross Hospital Medical School, London, the defects of that institution, and Edward Smith.

  • Smith, Edward, 1818?-1874.
Date:
1853
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The Medical Committee of the Charing-Cross Hospital Medical School, London, the defects of that institution, and Edward Smith. 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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    —^ The diagrams', bones, skeletons, and preparations in the Museum are locked up, so that a student must hunt up the porter in order to study them ; and when the porter is on his marauding expeditions into, the neighbourhood round about, this would be of little avail. The students are treated with disdain ; and so little are their feelings cared for, that one of them being ill in the Hospital, was refused the comfort of a private ward, and compelled to occupy the common ward, although a private ward was disengaged, and although even the officers of the Hospital interceded with the Director for him. The Lecturer’s income is most meanly curtailed ; not less than four-tenths of all his fees being withheld from him, viz., one- tenth for the Registrar, two-tenths for the Hospital, and one-tenth for current expenses ; and, moreover, no account is rendered to him, so that he is entirely at the mercy, and subject to the mistakes, of the Director. The only exception to all this oppression is the Director,—who exercises paramount, almost sole* authority over surgeons, phy- sicians, lecturers, officers, nurses, porters, and servants, and who with the clerk, and sometimes the further addition of the chaplain, constitutes, for three-fifths of the whole year, that highly important body, the “ Weekly Board of Managementand then the form of entry runs, “ Present,—the Rev. Mr. Edouart, the Director, and Medical Officers,” and the proceedings are recorded as having been carried or ordered unanimously. He receives as perquisites,.—house- residence, with its appendages (already referred to) ; his tenths as Registrar of the School, which last year exceeded £100, with his fees as Physician to the Hospital, and a copy of the Times, which lie sends to his son in the afternoon ; and so careful is he that the Hospital should have its due, that he applies to the clerk for the usual shilling gratuity to be given to the newspaper-boy at Christmas,—an item which is duly entered into the accounts ! All this is very proper, and no more than is his due for all the attention and anxiety which for many years lie has given to the Hospital. Let the other c fficials and sub-officials be remunerated in the like proportion. Such was the condition of this Hospital and School a few weeks ago ; and no rumour of any improvement has as yet got abroad. Some of my colleagues even will now become acquainted with a few of these facts for the first time, since the management of the Institution is so shrouded in secrecy, and every step taken so stealthily, that the truth is arrived at only by painful investi- gation. This list does not contain a tithe of the complaints which those well acquainted with the internal working of the Institution