The Westport Times AND CHARLESTON ARGUS. TUESDAY, DECEMBER 1, 1868.

Westport Times, Volume III, Issue 417, 1 December 1868, Page 2

The Westport Times AND CHARLESTON ARGUS. TUESDAY, DECEMBER 1, 1868.

jlf the Westport Hospital Committee are free from faults, they certainly do not enjoy an immunity from misfortunes. They are laudably industrious in framing rules and regulations. They are probably pregnant with the very best intentions. But their industry aud their intentions are ineffective. Accidents arise to disturb their equanimity and the equanimity of other .people; and, what is still more serious, the management of the institution is misunderstood, and its character is brought into disrepute. It was only recently that they were involved in the discussion of a complaint made for or by one Alfred Adams, who, under an altogether erroneous estimate of the objects of the institution, had gone to it as a patient, had there been cured, and had then represented that,while treated as an Hospital patient, it was intimated to him that he was expected to pay a doctor's fee —that doctor being the medical officer in charge. There were statements made, and letters read, at the last meeting of the Committee, sufficient in themselves to show that the case as it was represented for Adams, was not the case as it existed in fact. And the Committee passed a resolution exonerating the doctor from what, by insinuation, was a charge of placing the interests of the institution in a position secondary to his own, and in a questionable position so far as con. cerned the public. It was a remark of one of the Committee at the time, that | the matter was one more of misunderstanding than anything else—the result of hasty explanation; and the majority of people have agreed with him that it was a misunderstanding, beginning with the prime misunderstanding on Adams's part, that he was at all entitled to free Hospital relief. It was further, however, the opinion of a majority of people that if

there were as much care taken in the cultivation of an intelligible and unaffected manner of speech, as there was in the selection of " sensible and intelligent men " as the recipients of ideas on Hospital matters, there would be fewer chances of misunderstanding between man and man.

At the same meeting of Committee it was agreed—tacitly, if not by resolution—that all patients presenting themselves at the Hospital should be received, but that their becoming patients chargeable to the Hospital or otherwise should depend upon an inquiry by the Visiting Committee. To say that they should be " received " is, perhaps, expressing more than the Committee meant. It should rather be said that it was agreed that no patient should be denied admission, so that no wrong might be done while the rights of the matter were being ascertained. And a very wise precaution most people will confess this to have been.

But what happens ? Only yesterday more than a score of men, miners on GrilesTerrace and its neighbourhood, gave their time and their sympathy to the work of carrying from the township there to the doors of the Hospital, an unfortunate patient—a woman, who had been fearfully, probably fatally, burnt by falling into her own house fire. She lived on tha other side of the Orawaite, and, in consequence of the state of the track and the creek, they brought her by a most difficult and fatiguing road towards the Caledonian Terrace, and thence towards town —as near town as the site of the new and commodious Hospital. It would be no difficult matter, in the narration of this journey and its object, to do what is vulgarlyexpressed in the words " piling the agony;" but we shall leave our readers to imagine the sufferings of a woman, in such a condition, brought such a distance, and over such a track. And we shall leave them to imagine—for it is an easy task —the unutterable surprise and anger of the twenty men who brought their burden to the doors of the Hospital, to find chat these doors were closed against them.—because, forsooth, they "hadnot got an order from the Magistrate!" We are going, of course, by the testimony of the men who had engaged in this Samaritan task, and their statement is that such was the fact, and not only that wis tliis tlie fact, but that for fully a quarter of an hour was the woman detained outside until some person a shade less important than a Magistrate accidentally arrived on the scene, and admitted the patient into one of the ante-rooms. Whether the same considerate precautious, and inconsiderateness for patients would have been exhibited in a pelting rain, or in others of the various conditions of the Westport climate, is a question which the party outside had time enough to propound to themselves without any satisfactory answer. "But during that time some of their number made speed to town to find this imaginary Magistrate and the members of the Visiting Committee —we hope, for we cannot say with certainty, with a satisfactory result. The refusal of admission was, so far as we can understand, made by the subordinate official, and, if so, by a man new to his duties, and, consequently, less blameable. The admission, so far a.; we ran gather from the statements of the parties, must have been " granted" by the Chief Hospital Attendant, Mr Poole. But the facts remain that there was a refusal, that there was a delay, and that there were warm, and, under the circumstances, apparently just condemnations of the misconception of duty, not to speak of the lack of common charity, displayed in the detention outside of Hospital walls of a woman suffering from no infectious, but still more serious, illness. And there will remain, and increase, the feeling that there is some sad mismanagement of the Hospital if these twenty men or more go back to their mates with their version and their understanding of the circumstances, unexplained or uncontradicted. We do not vouch for even the veracity of that version, but we know that it was made I to us, and that it will probably be made to many more ; and that is to know enough to entitle us to urge upon the Committee to make a full statement of the matter, and of the extent of the misunderstanding, if misunderstanding there were. Of course, the case of a woman being brought to the Hospital is an exceptional And uuusual circumstance in itself, justifying precaution on the part of an uninformed attendant ; but, the sooner that all are informed as to the terms of admission or nonadmission, the better it will be for all ; and, if the case should have the result : only of raising the question of accommodation for women, a small and j i

passing evil may be the means to the end of attaining a great and permanent good.