trust, through the mediation of our blessed Redeemer, you may experience that mercy in another world, which a due regard to the credit of the paper currency of the realm forbids you to hope for here!"

And the economy recommended resembles that of the sportsman, who, wishing to reduce his other expenses in order to keep up his stud, signalised his first year of retrenchment by a triumphant measure of reduction-he ceased to take the Illustrated London News'!

A hospital organised like that, which, for the sake of a name, we have ventured to call the "Esculapian," if it have three hundred beds, provides students with a sufficient field of observation of every kind of disease, except unsoundness of mind, for which they must go to an asylum.

The number of beds in each hospital which has a medical school attached is as follows:*

* The London Hospital has 445 beds in constant use; the 75 beds in the new wing are not yet filled up. St Bartholomew's has 650 beds in constant use, 20 being kept in reserve for emergencies. St

Besides these eleven, the 'Medical Directory' mentions thirty-three other hospitals which have no medical schools attached to them, containing from 3 to 260 beds, the total number being 1693, or about 69 each on an average.

Therefore the total number of beds in the London public hospitals may be stated at 5089, with the present St Thomas's-and 5589 when that hospital shall have regained its 650 beds.

This computation includes the German Hospital, the Convalescent Hospital in Sackville Street, and the Dreadnought hospital-ship.

But of these 5089 only 3396 are available for clinical teaching, giving eleven hospitals with an average of about 300 beds to the medical schools; whereas, if the other 1693 beds were distributed among them, we might have eleven fine large hospitals, with an average of about 500 beds each.*

It is much better to have a large hospital, with wards allotted to special purposes, than to have a number of small hospitals, each devoted to the treatment of special diseases. A country like ours, which knows so much about engineering and commerce, ought to be aware there is an immense waste of power in keeping up such small institutions, which absorb a very large proportion of the subscriptions in payments for bricks and mortar,

Thomas's is at present in a small building at Newington, Surrey, but when rebuilt on the fine site opposite the Houses of Parliament it will contain 650 beds. It used to stand in St Thomas's Street, opposite Guy's, but it was pulled down to make room for some works connected with the London Bridge Railways.

There are several thousand beds in the workhouse hospitals, but the patients in them are principally aged and infirm, so they would not be available for clinical purposes.

ground-rent, and salaries to various officials; while the patients are not so well off as they are in the large hospitals, for no house-surgeons are provided in many cases, as the place is unable to pay one, and is too insignificant to attract men to take charge of it for nothing. London possesses not only special hospitals for diseases of the lungs and the eye-for which, no doubt, a more plausible defence may be set up-but also for crooked children, for cancer, for sore legs, and for other surgical diseases, some very severe, but others so simple that the patients are quite well a few days after the operation!

A special hospital is always likely to attract the worst cases; so that if a man wants to learn his profession thoroughly, he must, if this state of things be allowed to continue, pay a heavy fee to learn every separate disease. Very few would be at the bother of running about from place to place, even if they could afford it; so the sooner these "cancer shops" and "sore-leg shops are abolished, the better. Most of the medical officers are also on the staff of other hospitals-they would lose nothing; houses and shops are so eagerly sought after in London, that the governors would lose nothing; while, if the proceeds of the sale of the buildings were employed in improving and enlarging the general hospitals, the gain would be great, both to the patients and the students; and thus indirectly to the public, who would then be tended by doctors who would have seen better practice at their medical schools than is possible under the present system.

People ask, "What! would you admit fever cases into the general hospitals?" Yes, certainly; it is not a ques

tion of "would you admit?" but it is a plain fact that "we do admit " infectious diseases of all kinds. We cannot help it; the fever hospital is not half large enough, and is obliged to reject patients by scores, for want of room. We do not belong to that unfeeling age, when sufferers were turned from the doors of hospitals unaided, if they were so unfortunate as to be afflicted with "consumption or any other incurable disease." No; we admit all we have room for, giving the preference to the worst cases; for our improved acquaintance with sanitary laws enables us to take such precautions, that statistics prove infectious diseases are not more dangerous in well-conducted general hospitals than in special ones, either to the "fever" patients themselves, or to those who were admitted for other diseases.

And here we may be permitted to mention that we owe more than is generally supposed to one pre-eminent sick man's friend. We all know well enough how justly Longfellow has sung the praises of Florence Nightingale, as

"A noble type of good

Heroic womanhood;"

how she was the guardian angel of the wounded Crimean soldiers; and how celebrated her 'Notes on Hospitals' and 'Notes on Nursing' have become; but it is not generally known that her system of nursing is gradually being adopted in every hospital, so that her "St John's Training Institution" in Norfolk Street, Strand, cannot supply nurses fast enough to meet the demand for them; and fewer still have heard that she has drawn up a classification of diseases, with registers, indices, and so forth, on a plan so admirable, that it was accepted by the International Statistical

Congress, when it was laid before the assembled savans in 1860.* One feels quite pained to think such a peerless benefactress to suffering humanity should be in such wretched health herself; let us hope her own sufferings may be mitigated in alleviating those of others, for surely no one can say with greater truth than herself

"Non ignara mali, miseris succurrere disco."

Of special hospitals, perhaps a "children's hospital " is the least objectionable, as they require a playground. Children are among the most satisfactory patients we have, for they are very docile when they are away from their mothers; and if properly managed, it is quite surprising how well they behave, poor little things! even when undergoing operations in which it is impossible to administer chloroform. Then they are so small that they can be lifted about and washed without trouble, and they look so pretty, when they are lying patiently in clean sheets, dressed in clean night-gowns, to receive visitors in the afternoon.

The children's hospital in Great Ormond Street is ridiculously inadequate for the purpose; it had till lately only sixty beds to place at the disposal of London's three millions; while Paris, with only a third of the population, has a children's hospital of nearly 400 beds. "They manage better in France," you see, in this as in many other things. The Ormond Street hospital has lately been made large enough to hold a hundred beds, as public attention has been drawn to it a

*The Congress was held in King's College, from July 16 to 21, 1860, Prince Albert delivering the opening address. The paper was read to the second section, that on Sanitary Statistics, over which the Earl of Shaftesbury presided.