HOSPITALS.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume III, Issue 163, 19 April 1872, Page 3

HOSPITALS.

If there isanything.'of which Englishmen are wont to be peculiarly proud, it is the great hospitals " supported by voluntary contributions," of which the country is full. Yet even these noble institutions, are, it seems, being so gravely misused as to be productive of evil. According to statements which were deliberately made at a most influential meeting lately, tlie hospitals are not only pauperising the poor but are actually pauperising the' rich. Mr Eairlie Clarke's statement that about a fourth of the population of Londou receive gratuitous medicine and attendance from dispensaries and hospitals obviously proceeds on a misinterpretation of the figures. The 1,157,000 persons relieved anually are not each distinct individuals. .As--every act of relief is counted as a .person relieved, and it is probable that most of the persons who get relief go for it again and again, th e

actual of persons whom' those figuresrepreseufc, large as it is, jnus't be estimated at only a fraction—a fourth a sixth, or a tenth—of the figures themselves. Mr Pownall's suggestion that the number of letters of recommendation should be counted instead of the gross attendance is a just one, and should be adopted if the figures are to tell us anything worth knowing. The more startling (acts tell their story with far more directness. Mr VV". H. Smith said he had gone over the books of- one hospital and found twenty per cent, of the addresses to be fictitious. Dr Meadows stated that he knew cases where the wives of men with a thousand a year obtained this relief; and others in which the wives of people of good means disguised themselves in the clothes of their servants, or brought letters of recommendation in order to get gratuitous advice ; and Dr. (xuy, from his experience, confirmed the statement. AVhether the establishment of Provident Dispensaries would cure this abuse we can hardly say. It would, however, enable the independent poor to help themselves; and as for "well-to-do people who might still abuse charity, but one effectual means exists of dealing with them. Let their names and addresses be published, ,or some lady taken in disguise bt* indicted foi* getting relief under false pretences, and even if the law cannot punish the crime, society will. '