Statement of the Medical Officer of the Cranley Village Hospital : y A. Napper.

  • Napper, Albert, 1815-1894.
Date:
1862
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Statement of the Medical Officer of the Cranley Village Hospital : y A. Napper. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    Those who arc acquainted with the workings of our Hospitals in largo towns are aware that one of the great drawbacks to them is the impurity of the atmosphere. Persons coming from the pure air of the country are always liable to suffer ill-health from the foulness of the air in great cities; but patients taken from the breezy countiy downs find themselves in the very foci of disease in large hospitals The badly wounded agricultural peasant is by the present system transported to a distant city to almost certain death. The superior abilities of the operator avail him nothings for nature refuses to work with the surgeon’s knife. We have no hesit- ation in saying that the statistics of a hundred patients in village hospitals would, notwithstanding the comparative inferiority of the operators to the picked men in great metropolitan in- stitutions, show a very much higher per centage of cm’es than in London, despite the magnificent scale on which hospitals in the latter are conducted. The modest plan on which this little Hospital is conducted may be gathered from the balance sheet, made up to October, 1861, by which it appears that the whole expenses of the year were only £140 9s. 7d., whilst the receipts were £177 7s. lid., a state of things which many of our larger Hospitals might envy. We hear that the suc- cess of the Cranley Village Hospital has caused similar in- stitutions to be established in other quarters, and this is a matter in which selfish considerations as well as philanthropic ones should weigh with gentlemen living in the country. If the village doctors, by means of the training and experience these village hospitals afford, were all clever operators, very many valuable lives would be saved that otherwise perish. The charges of a London surgeon, if summoned any distance, are so large, that none .but the wealthy can afford to meet them. Persons of limited means must go to the nearest town.