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sums of money. The policy of Government has been simply and solely
directed against waste, and the results described in the report show how enormous
the waste has been. That many persons Must have suffered pecuniarily by
the check on waste is obvious enough, and it is of course their interest to
misrepresent as far as possible the action of Government, and to maintain an
agitation in the hope of producing a return to the former state of things ; and
this last object they have systematically endeavoured to gain by the odious accusa;
tion that the sick in hospital were stinted in the medicines and diet necessary to
their health. That such persons should act in this way was of course all along
expected, but from responsible Government officers of position a more judicial
analysis of facts may reasonably be expected. The Lieutenant-Governor trusts
that Dr. Irving may not have intended that his words should convey the meaning
which they obviously bear, and this seems the more probable, because the figures
he himself gives support inferences the very reverse of those which would be
naturally drawn from his remarks. The policy of Government, the Lieutenant-
G overnor is satisfied, was not by any one so misunderstood or perverted as
Dr. Irving's words imply, nor is there, the Lieutenant-Governor believes, a single
medical officer among those whose practice is thus impugned, who would admit
that his patients were left without anything that could be really beneficial or
useful to them. Dr. Irving is not without experience of these matters, and had
he desired to make an impartial examination of the events of 1878 in the
Campbell Hospital, he could not have disregarded the facts which he himself
records elsewhere, and which prove the death-rate of the year to have a very
favourable significance with regard to every point of management and
expenditure. He could not have failed to perceive that the epidemic of
small-pox alone in 1878 added to the death-rate, when compared with that of
1877, a quantity which is more than double the general excess actually recorded ;
that the unprecedented mortality from fever which prevailed on all sides
told with frightful effect on the classes resorting to the hospital, and that the
high price of food increased the mortality from every form of sickness. He
says further on of this very hospital that " anything like overcrowding must
undoubtedly tend to increase a death-rate already excessive ;" yet he makes no
mention of the unexampled crowding of this sickly year when attempting to
connect its death-rate with reduced expenditure. He ignores the fact that the
increase of death-rate in the Campbell Hospital was a mere fraction of the
increase which he himself records in every other Calcutta hospital where native
paupers are received. In 1878 the increase in the mortality of the Campbell
Hospital over that of 1877 was 5.38 per thousand of patients treated ; in the
Medical College Hospital it was 27.27 ; in the Mayo Hospital and its dependen-
cies it was 18.34 ; at Howrah it was 80.08. In the two last institutions no
change of practice occurred. The Howrah Hospital shares in the largest
degree the disadvantages of Sealdah. It receives many moribund patients, but
there is a counterpoise of many who are in good circumstances, while from
Howrah small-pox patients are sent to Sealdah. Yet the death-rate was 8 per
cent. over that of the previous year at Howrah, while at Sealdah one-half per
cent. was the measure of the excess. At the Campbell Hospital in 1878 there
died 253 per 1,000 of patients treated ; in 1877, 248 per thousand ; and in 1876,
250 per 1,000: but these two earlier years were years of good public health,
and it is not fair to compare with them a year of exceptional ill-health, such as
1878. The year which could most fairly be compared with 1878 is the year
1875, which, though a year of better public health than 1878, was the most
unhealthy year since the establishment of the hospital. In that year 7,782
patients were treated at a cost of Rs. 35,222 for diet and stimulants ; in 1878;
11,001-were treated at a cost of only Rs. 23,876. In the year 1875, however,
with a smaller number of patients and consequently less overcrowding, and
an enormous expenditure per head of patients treated, the mortality was 280
per thousand; while in 1878, the year the diet economy is said to have had
such mischievous effect, with great overcrowding and unprecedented general
sickness, the death-rate was only 253 per thousand.
Had the mortality of 1878 at the Campbell Hospital been double that
of 1877, instead of barely exceeding it, it cannot be doubted that a valid
defence could have been found for it in the events of the year ; yet the Surgeon-
General intimates that the highly favourable state of things recorded in the