GAOL AS HOSPITAL

Opotiki News, Volume I, Issue 47, 22 June 1938, Page 1

GAOL AS HOSPITAL

SOUTH AFRICAN I’iONEERS Jj’JXE NEW INSTITUTION JOHANNESBURG, -''birch 21. Just over *3O years ago, when Johannesburg was a rugged mining camp, the lawless and the sick liad one thing in conn mm —they shared the local gaol, which also served as the camp’s first .hospital. But the needs of the sick and injured became more insistent and the city’s first real hospital came into being—a collection of tents in which Johannesburg's pioneers were mused back to health. Now the outcome of that early effort, the Johannesburg General Hospital, lias just, celebrated its fiftieth anniversary. In. halt a century the hospital has not only , become the largest in the British Empire, but among the best equipped ill the world. Little did those pioneers dream, when the weed and iron structure was erected in 1888, that ;«they were launching an era of almost unparalleled progress. Urom that little tin (•(instruction with its 14 beds the hospital has grown into the present institution which is capable- of accommodating nearly 21XX) patients. \ During the first year of the hospital’s existence loti in-patients received attention, while Hie casualty arid out-patient attendances 'only gave a total of 14. Last year the Johannesburg General Hospital treated 29,315 in-patients and 282,700 out-patients. ,