100 Years Ago - The Army Medical Service and the New Medicine

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/open-air-cure-for-soldiers-9rrtkkd9h?utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=newsletter_118&utm_medium=email&utm_content=118_October%2004,%202017&CMP=TNLEmail_118918_2349394_118

THE DOCTOR WRITES A LETTER FOR A WOUNDED MAN

OPEN-AIR TREATMENT AT ST. THOMAS'S HOSPITAL

OUTSIDE AN ADVANCED DRESSING STATION

A ' WARD ,IN ENDELL STREET HOSPITAL.

" 'This 'hospital was' staffed -entirely bywomen

Open air cure for soldiers

Protection from the weather is given by verandahs with glazed roofs and sides, but quite open in front, though in extreme weather further protection is afforded by sailcloth screens

December 27, 1916

A correspondent writes: When the open-air wards at Dollis Hill House Hospital, designed by Mr A Saxon Snell were opened for soldier patients last July, doubts were expressed as to their salubrity and comfort in winter. A visit to the hospital, even under the present wintry conditions, showed the value of the open-air principle when applied with certain modifications that have been absent from some examples of military hospitals without windows.
The huts are made of asbestos sheets in wooden frames, with rubberoid roofing. There is aso an open verandah ward. One hut has a south-east aspect, and the other, with the verandah, faces due south. Coke stoves provide the heating, and protection from the weather is given by verandahs 6ft wide with glazed roofs and sides, but quite open in front, though in extreme and boisterous weather and during evening and morning dressings on winter days, further protection is afforded by sailcloth screens.
Patients transferred from the Endell-street Military Hospital, to which Dollis Hill House is auxiliary, quickly lose their pallor and regain their powers of sleep. Healing of wounds, clearing up of lung troubles, and restoration of what we called “tone” are also rapid.
Patients sit quite contentedly in the open-air huts, even when snow falls, although the recreation room in the main building stands is always available.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/a-model-hospital-v6b7mhsb9?utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=newsletter_118&utm_medium=email&utm_content=118_October%2004,%202017&CMP=TNLEmail_118918_2349394_118

A model hospital

Plastic surgery has been made a feature of the establishment, and there is an excellent X-ray plant in a special building

April 10, 1917

The modern Military hospital is no longer a substantial structure of brick and mortar. It is a collection of temporary buildings put up in the minimum of time and at the minimum of expense. Such a hospital is the Ontario Military Hospital in Kent. It took seven months to build from the time the architect first arrived on the ground until it was opened, and the cost was less than £70 per bed.
It is to the Canadian province of Ontario that we owe this vast concern, which is still growing, and which has tended over 6,000 patients in less than 12 months. The subscribers to the fund and all the people of Ontario may well be pleased, for their money has been spent to good purpose, and they have the satisfaction of knowing that their hospital is put to its full use. There are rarely fewer than 600 patients in the wards, and often there are nearly half as many.
The Ontario Hospital is absolutely self-contained, for there are facilities for all the most delicate surgical work ready to hand. There.is a dental surgery where dentists and surgeons, all Canadians, most of them from Ontario, and all specialists, work together. Men with jaw and face wounds are made whole again. Plastic surgery has been made a feature of the establishment, and there is an excellent X-ray plant in a special building. Many American and Canadian business methods have been introduced, and there is an excellent system of card index filing in connexion with the X-ray treatment. The records of the patients are kept with meticulous care, and by the card index system any man’s medical history is revealed in 30 seconds. There are at present 20 wards in the hospital, each of 52 beds. In addition, there is an isolation ward of 40 beds, bringing the total up to 1,080. In six weeks 1,040 more beds will be ready, bringing the accommodation up to 2,120. This is a wonderful total for a temporary hospital which did not exist a year ago.
NURSES FROM ONTARIO
In regard to the staff, the Ontario people have again come to the fore. They have sent 80 trained nurses. All were certificated before the war, for a three-years’ course is necessary in the province before the final examinations are passed. These nurses rank as lieutenants, and wear two stars on their shoulder-straps. They are paid as lieutenants, and their accounts, field allowances, and mess allowances are all dealt with in the same way as those of the officers. They wear a distinctive uniform, with a blue cloak lined with scarlet, a blue soft hat, and the Army Medical Service badge of Canada, which has the serpent and staff surrounded with the maple leaves instead of the bay leaves.

The matron, Miss N Smith of Ottawa, ranks as a captain, and wears captain’s badges.

In addition to the nursing staff there are 310 NCOs and men doing duty as orderlies, dentists, dispensers, engineers, firemen in the power house, dressers, motor drivers, and police.
The arrangement of the buildings is specially noteworthy, for they are laid out with the idea of economizing labour in the distribution of food and saving time in attendance on patients. The kitchens are specially convenient, and the food is taken through covered ways to rooms where it is carved on hot stoves. There are bread-cutting machines, steam boilers capable of taking a sack of potatoes, steam ovens for cooking green vegetables, baking ovens, and all the apparatus of a modern hotel kitchen. Diets are carefully checked, and there is no waste.
Every day the diets required from each ward are sent down to the quartermaster’s stores, where baskets are filled with any special food required. This check goes also to the kitchen, where the dishes are prepared. Every effort is being made to economise without stinting the men, and several good schemes for saving have been initiated. Whereas every man used to be given two slices of bread on his plate, the bread is now put on a large dish in the centre of the table; where a man may help himself. Thus, if there is any left over, it may be used for puddings or other dishes. Potatoes are served in the same way.
A PERMANENT CINEMA
The entertainment of the patients, in itself a matter of great import, has been well provided for, and there is a permanent cinema machine built in off the big recreation hail where pictures are shown every week. The man are very appreciative, and thanks to the generosity of certain firms, they are given good films. Indeed, they have had their own hospital screened in a series of scenes and a complete picture play, “From Hen to Hospital,” was acted There are nine VAD hospitals near the main hospital, and in these another 509 beds are available for the less serious cases. There is a squadron of 12 motor-ambulances to take the men from the station to the hospital or to the auxiliary establishments. Lieutenant-Colonel D W Macpherson, the officer commanding, has had a great deal of experience; he was for a long time in France with the Canadian forces. He was for many years in the Canadian Militia, and long before the war broke out had a thorough grounding in all the multifarious duties of his position.
The quartermasters, men of great moment in such a large establishment, are Captains W H Fox and H Goodman, and one look at their stores gives the visitor an idea of their responsibilities. It is a great tribute, not only to the generosity of the men and women of Ontario, but also to the skill and, executive ability of the staff, that such an undertaking can be so well worked from a distance.
The Ontario Hospital receives men of any unit in the Imperial or Colonial forces. Men from Canada, Newfoundland, South Africa, New Zealand, Australia, and indeed every outpost of Empire, are to be found in the wards. The men mix with each other and thus gain much information of the life of all the colonies.


https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/work-of-the-woman-doctor-xpvw58rld?utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=newsletter_118&utm_medium=email&utm_content=118_October%2004,%202017&CMP=TNLEmail_118918_2349394_118

Work of the woman doctor

The need of the woman doctor is not one that will end with the war

December 27, 1917

Among the prejudices which the War has broken down is the prejudice against women doctors. The Church and the Law may still hold out, because the public demand for female ministers and female lawyers has not yet overwhelmed the barriers. The public need of female physicians and surgeons has swept away all prejudice against them, except among the interested or the blindly conservative.
The military hospital in Endell-street is daily proving what women can do to repair the ravages of violence; and not far away, in the Gray’s Inn-road, there is a hospital where women repair the ravages of dirt and ignorance and apathy. For 40 years and more the Royal Free Hospital has been fighting these foes. Today, when the value of healthy life has been forced upon the nation’s consciousness at the moment when the nation finds itself woefully short of the ministers of life and health, we are all waking up to the possibilities of the woman doctor. But the poor people of the district could long ago have told what this hospital was doing among them, and how generously it was doing it, without asking questions, without asking for payment, without ever having asked even for that letter of admission which all other hospitals demanded.
The Royal Free Hospital was the first to open its doors to women students. It accorded practical experience and opportunity for public service to what is now the London (Royal Free) School of Medicine for Women. The school, which is for women only, can afford now to forget its long struggle against many kinds of difficulty and opposition, and be content to point to its buildings in Hunter-street, Brunswick-square (the nucleus of them an Adam house, folded with woman’s touch of grace and fitness into the new need), where more than 400 students, each prepared to support herself during the five or six years’ training, work in laboratories, dissecting, rooms, demonstration theatres, and so forth, that are equipped to perfection.
The hospital which they serve was always too small for the needs of the neighbourhood, to say nothing of the need of the school. Just before the war a new outpatients’ department and a uniquely complete maternity department were constructed, only to be handed over to the War Office for the benefit of wounded officers. But even had the hospital the use of this hardly won addition it would still be too small for its work. After being hemmed in for years, it has now the chance of further expansion. A large site adjoining has been presented to it. The Royal Free Hospital intends to establish here an extension, portions of which will be specially devoted to the study and cure of tuberculosis and to maternity and child welfare. And it asks for £200,000 for the purpose.
Such a claim hardly needs pressing. The nation is realizing bitterly today what it has lost in power through mere waste of infant and adult life. It means to prevent that waste in future. The capacity of women for medicine and surgery, their special fitness for the treatment of women and children, their power to solve for us certain pressing social problems, have been by now so proved that no one will henceforth dare to dispute them. And the need of the woman doctor is not one that will end with the war. With destruction raging around us, the thought of the Royal Free Hospital investing £200,000 in the priceless security of life, and more life, is good to contemplate. Every pound that is given will be so much alleviation of present misery, so much preparation for that better world which England has vowed to bring into being. Three generous people have already given £500 each. A few more such and the good work will be well under way.

The £200,000 for new wards, laboratories, and equipment is not all that the Royal Free Hospital asks for. It needs, desperately and immediately, a sum of £10,000 to enable it to cope with the maternity work which would, but for the war, have been going on in the new building now occupied by wounded officers. What straits it is put to, what suffering and waste are now being endured by the mothers and children of this poor and crowded neighbourhood, are only known by those who have to face them daily. Of this £10,000 little, if any, would be spent on bricks and mortar, for the plan is to make the best of one or more of the fine old houses in the neighbourhood as a makeshift. But the need is urgent. Cheques for either fund should be made payable to “The Treasurer,” crossed Lloyds Bank (St James’s-street branch), and addressed to the Appeal Secretary, Royal Free Hospital Appeal Offices, 8 Hunter-street, WC1. And as a last word - there are things called National War Bonds. The nation wants to sell its bonds, and the Royal Free Hospital is quite ready to accept them as gifts.