BARBARITIES OF OUR PSEUDO CIVILISATION.

Shannon News, 10 March 1922, Page 3

BARBARITIES OF OUR PSEUDO CIVILISATION.

(To the Editor.)

Sir, —There are absurdities and cruelties which seem to escape the notice of our medical authorities, and the sufferers are too frequently helppless and voiceless —those to which we allude are in connection with our hospitals. ’ What can be more barbarous than, the present, custom ol routing out invalids and old people (who have tossed in sleeplessness through a painful night) at 5 o’clockon a winter’s morning? Just as they sink into the needed repose comes a nurse who insists on washing their faces! Who could sleep after-*that operation? Some are even made (though scarce able to walk) to travel to a cold, freezing lavatory. The cruelty of it! The absurdity! Again, we all know of patients who have entered the hospitals with no symptom of chest complaint, only to die speedily with pneumonia, What, need to wonder, when men (and women) who have always worn flannel, are invari ably stripped of their warm clothing and attired in thin cotton hospital habiliments? The good fairies, Order, Cleanliness, Fresh Air, run wild and become Furies and - Fates, when no longer ruled by common sense. And that is conspicuous by its absence from our hospitals. Frequently the patients exist in one continual through draught, Nurses seem too ignorant to distinguish between that and beneficent fresh air. Strangest of all, the doctors, the only creatures to whom the patients should be able to look for protection from/the folly or tyranny of the nurses, seem painfully blind to this abominable state of things. One occasionally sees letters praising these abodes of pain and woe; one never sees complaints of these ‘abuses. That is very suggestive, to any one who knows the World. And so long as they are not. brought before the public, they will hold their ground, to our disgrace. The excuse is usually, “We are understaffed.”

What right have they to be understaffed? When ninety-nine out of a hundred are Government, assists, and when ■wealthy and generous Chinese residents give munificent contributions, not to mention donations from ail sides of food and many other things; there should certainly be no difficulty in securing an amply sufficient staff, and of paying them well for their arduous work. As Hamlet remarked, “There Ts something rotten in the State of Denmark.”

The hardship to the nurses! Who ever sees a nurse walk From earliest morn to the close of her long day, everything is done on the run. No wonder they ask for strong girls. What woman’s constitution can stand that sort, of thing for a long time? And the comfort of the, patient is sacrificed to mere show, to making the place look neat and shiny in the eyes of the doctors (who ought to know better) and of visitors. Is n not better to leave th'e bed - untidied than to destroy the inestimable work of “tired Nature’s sweet restorer, balmy sleep?”

It is only quite recently that we have become even so far civilised as to refrain from waking our poor sicTt folks to make then take their physic. And the inspection of hospitals—what a farce, when they are always notified beforehand! If these things are not noticed by the doctors, it is high time that they should be. And those mentioned are not by any means all the abuses that require rectifying. I am, etc., . SPECTATOR.