BRITISH HUMBUG.

Colonist, Volume III, Issue 313, 19 October 1860, Page 4

BRITISH HUMBUG.

The foreigner who looks into the advertising pages of the Times cannot fail to be struck with the apparently bankrupt condition of our London hospitals. Day by day a column and a half of most urgent advertisements assure the public that, unless immediate aid is given, half their wards must be shut up. Side by side with these begging appeals are to be found others, equally pathetic, imploring aid for the completion of hospitals, the necessity for which is more than doubtful. In one instance, indeed, the glaring contradiction involved in these two appeals is monopolised by our Institutions—St. George's Hospital. Last year an extra story was added to this building; to-day an advertisement appears in the columns of the Times stating that "If the public do not, by increased subscriptions and donations, enable the governors to meet the deficiency (of income with respect to expenditure) they will be compelled to close several of 2 the wards." Can the force of audacious cooless further go ? But let us ask, in sober calmness, what is the cause of the growth of "charitable" bricks and mortar, and what is its tendency? To read the carefully worded advertisements, it would appear that hospitals, in the metropolis at least, were erected solely on the behalf of suffering humanity, and that the more we build the better for society. Any one who knows anything of the working of our metropolitan charitable institutions is fully aware how far this is from the real—and, we must add, in two many cases, the vulgar—truth. It is noticeable that most of our new hospitals are dedicated to the treatment of special diseases; and it is further observable that most of these have originated in the energetic action of some individual. The germ of such buildings is the dispensary. An energetic surgeon makes up his mind to step to fame and fortune by means of bricks and mortar. But first of all, he must hit upon some striking speciality—the "Dispensary for the Treament of Inverted Eyelashes," for instance. A quiet house is taken ia a side street, patrons and patronesses are canvassed for, and in an incredibly short space of time a goodly sprinkling of the aristocracy have been found to pledge themselves to serve suffering humanity and Mr. in the matter of inverted eyelashes. There is an annual list of subscribers, and the accounts of course audited; but possibly a more searching enquiry than dilletiante auditors are likely to give would prove that Mr. , in his account with poor humanity, has much the best of it. This goes on for a certain number of years, when it is found that eyelashes are becoming inverted in alarming numbers; indeed, there are carefully got up statistics to prove that every tenth person is suffering from this terrible disease, the study of which needs a larger sphere than the dispensary, with its 20,000 (!) cases per annum, can possibly afford—in short, the dispensary bud must expand into a hospital. There are certain persons who seem to have been born only to be manipulated out of their money for the erection of new hospitals. It may be incontestably proved that inverted eyelashes can be treated in the old established hospitals close at hand; but that fact seems never to have entered the thoughts of the gentlemen and ladies who so obsequiously follow the lead of the ambitious Mr. , who is determined that there shall be a building devoted to nothing but misplaced eyelashes, and perhaps—but this is, of course, quite under the rose—to himself. In due course of time the special hospital is completed. The old woman who used to sweep out the dispensary is converted into the proud hall-porter; the small table in the back room is developed into the ample board-room; the matron and the house-steward stand in respectful attitudes; and Mr. is proudly conscious of the pinnacle of human greatness that he occupies (in his subordinates' eyes, at least), when the board become perfectly conscious that the "establishment" is eating up all their means, and that " unless a charitable public," &c, come forward, thousands of inverted eyelashes will be left to their miserable fate. Such is the history of half the special hospitals at present existing in the metropolis. Founded in the grossest self-seeking on the part of some individual, they are matured only through a system of mendicancy already strained to the uttermost, and which sooner or later must give way. But, let us ask, do these special hospitals subserve to the education of pupils ? Most decidedly not. Their tendency is to starve the general hospitals, where the schools are established, of that variety of cases which are so instructive to the future practitioner. Moreover, this splitting up of specialities with more than Egyptian minuteness has a tendency to destroy that unity of disease which the philosophic mind should always keep in view. The hospitals for inverted toe nails and for inverted eyelashes may turn out clever operators in their very confined departments of surgery; but they will never furnish great surgeons, or advance the art beyond mere manipulative smartness. There are certain large specialities, of of course, to which our argument does not apply; but these exceptions must be patent to the reader. It is in surgery, more than than in medicine, that we have erred in this respect. "Let us ask, for instance, what possible necessity there is for the imposing looking building unfinished on the Fulham-road—the future Cancer Hospital. Is there anything in the treatment of this " Fell" disease which requires its disolation from other surgical cases ? What peculiarity is there, again, in the treatment of diseases of the rectum, that a special hospital should be devoted to them ? And if there is no reason in favor of such hospitals, independently of the scientific and educational evidence against them, there is the one great financial reason, that they squander the means: of tho charitable, *

Every one of these petty hospitals has its working staff, besides the building itself, the expense of keeping up which, in many leases, is the chief charge which tenderhearted and humane people are called upon pay. It is this useless multiplication of 'machinery which is tending to exhaust the Jpurses of the charitable, and to bring the principle of voluntary contribution into bad odour; and we most heartily hope and trust that our great provincial cities and towns will, in this respect, look upon our London practice as a matter to be avoided, rather than be sevilely followed.— British Medical Journal.