by children when they have been a short time in the hospital, especially as it is sometimes contrasted with unexpected dulness on the part of their elders. In cases of pneumonia, typhus fever, and some other diseases, it is customary to keep a table with a slidingscale, to show the variations in the temperature of the patient's body from day to day, just like the slidingscale of the price of wheat, which most squires keep in the sanctum they persist in calling their study.*

*

Well, one day we found we could not manage to be at the hospital at the proper time for taking the height of the thermometer in a case of pneumonia, and as we did not wish to trouble the house-physician, we looked out for some intelligent patient who might be competent to make the observation. Ann J. was a housemaid, and we thought she would do, so we asked her, "What does the thermometer stand at?" to see if she could distinguish the mercury, which some people cannot do. "It stand ag'inst the flower-stand on the doctor's table, sir."

"But I mean how high does it stand?"

"About half-way up the handles, sir."

"No, no; I mean how high does the mercury stand in the tube?"

"There's no tube on the table now, sir; nurse has taken it away to wash."

And actually, when we came to inquire, we found

A lady asked us one day what a sliding-scale was. We began to tell her it was a zig-zag line drawn across a number of little squares like panes of glass. -"Oh, I know, just like a flash of forked lightning across a church window!" she exclaimed. After this graphic description, we are sure, reader, you comprehend it thoroughly.

she knew nothing whatever about the thermometer, and had never noticed the figures on the scale, though she had seen it applied to the pneumonia case for several days.

Since then we have found many tradespeople quite as ignorant on this subject as this smart housemaid. As she took so little interest in anything that went on under her nose we thought she would not be a very apt pupil, so we asked for little Jenny, the daughter of a farm-labourer in the country, where she had lived all the ten years of her small life before she had come to the hospital. She had not been long in the house, but she seemed sharp, so we thought we could easily make her understand what we wanted. She came, and we asked her, "Jenny, do you see these little marks by the side of the glass, with figures here and there?”

"Yes, sir-the mercury is now standing at sixtythree degrees."

She said this quite composedly, and she had not heard us speaking to Ann, so you may imagine how agreeably surprised we were to hear her come out with it so pat, as she had never seen a thermometer before she came to the hospital; but she had watched the clinical clerk's operations at the bedside of the pneumonia case with such interest, that her curiosity was never satisfied till she had prevailed on the sister to tell her what it all meant.

Of course she took the observation for us all right, so our sliding-scale was not damaged.

Here is another instance of juvenile acuteness. One Sunday morning a sister was reading and explaining the second lesson to her little patients, when she came to the following verse in the account of our Lord raising

from the dead the daughter of Jairus :

"And he com

eth to the house of the ruler of the synagogue, and seeth the tumult, and them that wept and wailed greatly " (Mark v. 38).

66 Do you know what a tumult means?" she asked. "Oh yes," said a bright little girl; "I suppose that's what she died of, poor thing."

The child evidently confounded tumult with tumour, a word in constant use at the hospital, of course.

The subject of chorea is introduced in this chapter merely for the sake of referring the reader to Hecker's 'Epidemics of the Middle Ages,' translated for the Sydenham Society by Dr B. G. Babington, 1844; and to Dr Roth's 'Histoire de la Musculation Irresistible.' London: Baillière, 1850. These books must be of the greatest interest to all who desire the extinction of superstition, for they show how the mysterious "Demoniacs " may be reduced by modern science to the rank of patients suffering from various nervous diseases, many of which are curable.

Musical readers may perhaps like to know that the first named author (p. 167-174) gives the music for the dance called Tarantella," which was at one time a widespread epidemic.

CHAPTER VII.

THE WARDS.

Arrangement, description, and diagram of a ward-Christmas decorations-Beds—Screens—Stamps — Bazaars—Walls— Floors-Tommies". -Brackets- Prescription - papers Clothes-box-Bracket-chair and bed-table-Sisters of Mercy v. paid nurses-District visiting-Costume-Nurses' duties and costume-Wards for patients of a better class-Proposed alterations for provincial hospitals and dispensaries-Fourthyear men might be unpaid assistant medical officers.

WE keep talking of hospitals, wards, sisters, and nurses; but as some of our readers may have not the least idea what they are like, perhaps we had better describe them. The wards are not alike everywhere; but the arrangement which seems most approved nowadays for a hospital in London, where space is so valuable, is that which contains forty beds, placed as shown in the diagram:

It consists of two large rooms, comprising the whole width of the pavilion of the hospital. The wall which separates them allows communication at the two ends, and has large openings in it close to the ceiling, opposite the windows, to insure ventilation for both rooms. The windows are made of very thick glass, and reach nearly up to the ceiling. The lower sash is seldom moved, but the upper sash is on a hinge, and opens inwards. The air passes in and is changed at the very top of the ward; the bad air goes out at the opposite window, and thus all draught below among the patients is prevented.

The fireplaces are at the middle of the partitionwall, so that the heat radiates from the centre of the ward; and if a good fire is kept up, the rooms do not feel cold, even at the farthest corner.

You enter from the corridor by the folding-doors, which sometimes have to be thrown wide open to allow patients to be carried in. Opposite these are smaller doors, at the other end of the room, leading to lavatories and other conveniences, which we need not explore to-day. Suffice it to say that the baths and so forth are on a scale of liberality which would astonish our ancestors, who used to think they provided for every contingency when they afforded you the means of washing about a square foot of you.

Each patient should have as nearly as possible 1600 cubic feet of air to breathe in, therefore each room which contains twenty beds should have at least the following dimensions :-length, 80 feet; breadth, 26 feet; height, 15 feet. These proportions give 1560 cubic feet to each bed.

But a low room well ventilated is much better than