The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1870-03-26 00:00:00

THE HOSPITAL FOR SICK CHILDREN.
(i3y our Inndon Correrpondent.)

A visit to the Hospital for Sick Children, situated
in Great Ormond-street, has afrorded so much food for
reflection that it occurs to me that some account of it
may be interesting. Great Ormond-street is a fine
old etreet in a quarter of the town which was once a
fashionable locality, and the houses have a grand quiet
air of sombre respectability which many prefer to the
bright, garish look of new and stuck-up neighbour-
hoods. It is a street well adapted for charitable in-
stitutions, of whish there is more than the one alluded
to. The Hospital for Sick Children consists of two fine
old houses converted into one. It is unpretentious in
appearance, but even the exterior presents an aspect of
solid comfort, siii`ed to the benevolent work that is
accomplished within. It has no hospital a r about it,
but rather looks what it in fact is, a fine large mansion.
The institution is now nearly twenty years old.
Like many an other philanthropic establishment, it
hadsmallbeginnings. InJanuary,lBso, ninegentlemen,
two of whom were doctors. met to consider whether
it would not be advisable to establish some such an in-
stitution. Their object was twofold—the special study
of the diseasee of children, and relief forsuffering. These
gentlemen laboured assiduously, at first with Beauty
encouragement, but in March 1851 their efforts led to
a public meeting, with Lord Ashley (now Lord Shaf-
tesbury) in the chair. Subsequently a house in Great
Ormond.etreet was taken—a house which had formerly
been the residence of Dr. Mead, physician to George
the Second, and memorable for having been one of the
earliest advocates of inoculation and the conductor of
experiments on criminals. Though founded in 1850
the hospital was not opened till the following year
one sick little girl being the only patient to commence
with. But the institution steadily grew and prospered,
despite many difficulties, and not a little of its pros-
perity was owing to the kindly and generous advocacy
of Mr. Charles Dickens. And when the committee
published their first annual report they were enabled to
announce the Queen as the patroness of the institution.
How vast is the good now accomplished may be seen
from the fact that the number of patients admitted last
year was 715, and that the average daily attendance of
out-patients is 200. Since the foundation of the institu-
tion about 162,000 out-patients and 8,000 in-patients
have had the benefits of the best medical and surgical
treatment, while the latter have had the full advan-
tages of this combined with kindly and careful
nursing, in the hospital. It should be mentioned
also that in connection with this institution there
is a Convalescent Hospital at Highgate, where
at present only 20 children are received; but increased
funds, it is to be hoped, will expand the good work.
Cromwell House, as it is called, stands 400 feet above
the level of smoky, dingy London; it contains spacious
rooms, has a fine large garden,—what a treat for the
little boys and girls just getting well l—and there are
yet fields left in the immediate vicinity.
But to revert to the parent hospital. He or she
must have a hard and callous heart indeed who on
visiting the institution and passing through its bright
cheery wards—having very little in common with
many of the wards at some other hospitals—does not
feel at once saddened by the sight of so much suffering,
and yet gladdened at the evidence of so much thought-
ful care, so much medical skill, so much of woman's
love and woman's work being brought to bear on the
relief of suffering and pain. A visit to the place ought
to mske one better, and bring out one's kindly feelings
not only towards the little sufferers but towards those
who devote themselves to the relief of pain and sick-
ness. To go through the wards of most hospitals is a
Pad occupation, and the sight of such an amount of
ilinecs and disease has something repulsive in it; but
in the Hospital for Sick Children you see so much that
is pleasant as well as sad ; the little inmates are so
patient, and, if not very ill, so cheerful, and brighten
up so cheerily when a vis tor, especially a lady visitor
(and the writer was accompanied by a lady) speaks
gently and lovingly to them, that the visit gives more
pleasure than sadness. The hospital has had many a
generous and kind-hearted visitor, and some among the
highest in the land. Queen Victoria, the Princess of
Wales, the Princess Royal, Princess Christian, Prin-
cess Louise, and others, have walked from cot to cot,
speaking lovingly to th 3 little occnnante, and giving
them toys to help them on to recovery—and toys
have some medicinal properties, depend upon it—and
in a more subetantia way helping the institution.
The Hospital for Sick Children well bears out its
name. It is really a hospital as we usually understand
the word-3 word by the way the meaning of which
was very elaborately discussed by learned lawyers
during an important trial some time ago. It has its
waiting-room, its consulting room, its committee room,
its bath-room, and, in a word, all that such an institu-
tion demands. But, not to enter into dry detail, let us
enter the Girls' Ward—a large, cheerful-looking apart-
ment. Round it are placed little iron cots, in each of
which ion sick and suffering girl, none older than twelve,
which is the limit of age for admission. They are all
dressed in red Garibaldi jackets, which of itself gives
a bright and cheerful look to the room and pleases the
little patients. To each cot is fitted a moveable tray
on which are placed their meals when they are too ill
to get up, or a doll or a picture-book, or some little bit
I of fancy work to amuse them and occupy their time
pleasantly. Scrupulously clean, as a matter of course,
well warmed with open tires and well s entilated, and
1 with a "musical box " playing away merrily, the ward
might be called a nursery, the toys and picture-books
helping to give it that appearance ; but the pale, worn,
sorrowful expression on the face of this little girl, or
the hectic flush and over-bright eyes of that little
sufferer, and the card hanging to each cot notifying the
diet in each case, remind one that it is really a hos-
pital for the relief of pain and sickness, and, if
human skill and kindness can effect it, for restoration
to health. Here was one little girl with disease of the
hip joint, her legs being kept in position by weights
hanging from the foot of the bed; there another on
whose childish yet prematurely old-looking face there
was an expression of acute pain; and there another
who was getting on most favourably, and who, in her
childish anxiety that her doll should look "nice"
seemed to forget her own ailment; but all were patient
and "good," and all peemed ti feel that kindness
characterised all about them ; for

" Children know

Inetfnetive tanght, the friend or foe."

I think it is generally admitted that women can
bear pain better than men, and the impression that
the boys are not quite so patient, rather more fretful,
and altogether rather more troublesome than the girls,
would be conveyed to the mind of most visitors who,
after walking quietly and thoughtfully through the
girls' ward, should enter that of the boys. But here,
too, love and kindness do their beneficent work. The
little fellows know that all around them wish them
well, and are doing all in their power to relieve pain
and sickness; and the boys, when they are well enough
to play, enter heartily into such amusements as are
permitted, and get thoroughly well all the more rapidly
for it. Fancy a rocking-horse employed in curative
treatment, and its curative powers under certain con.
ditions are undoubted. In fact, throughout the insti-
tution there is ample evidence that doctors and nurses,
and all connected with its management, act on broad
and enlightened principles, knowing that mind and
body must be dealt with simultaneously- -that medical
and surgical skill may avail much, but that to make
the little sufferer as happy as outward circum-
stances can effect it also avails much—in fact, as the
learned theologian Dr. Dwight expressed it, "he
who makes a little child happier for half an hour, is a
fellow worker with God."

The indirect good that this institution thus does can
never be estimated, but it must be very great. Much
of the sickness and disease amongst children arises
from poverty, which brings in its train so many ills,
not the least of which is insufficient food; and the
regular diet and regimen of such an institution as this
go far towards effecting the recovery of those who are
"discharged cured." But even a child of eight or ten
years of age must feel the advantages of a bright,
cheerful room that is always well ventilated, always
clean, aril always comfortably warm. The contrast of
all this with the dirty, close, confined rooms which mean
home" cannot but lie felt, and it may be that the no
longer Rid: child takes home with him lessons of clean-
linces and comfort which may do soup thing towards
making home happy. But at all events, when tho
arente and friends of the little sufferers come to visit
them they must see that much depends on good air and
cleanlingoi which are within the reach of many a poor
family that sadly neglect to avail themselves of them.
Society has made great progress in this respect of
late years. The labouring classes are generally
beginning to appreciate the importance of fresh air
and cleanliness, but still sickness and death are
frequently the result of overcrowding in "homes
that are no homes," and of other causes that
are to a great extent avoidable by the efforts of
those who now suffer from them. As powerful though
undemonstrative monitors in this respect, all our
hospitals are doing a good work, over and above their
special functions in the direct treatment of the ills that
flesh is heir to. To visit the Hospital for Sick
Children affords far more pleasure than sadness, but
there is one sad thought that will occur. For every
one of those sick children, thus kindly cared for and
attended in bright, cheerful rooms, how many are
ying in close, dirty holes that can scarcely be called
oomi, where the ale in foul and fetid, and where

noise and dirt, insufficient food and perhaps ignorant
treatment, tend to swell the numbers (.1 dead and
dying children! The thorght is indeed a saddening
one, but we all know there is too much truth in it.
Add to the indirect good that in than done by such an
institution as that referred to the direct good that is
done in relieving pain and anguish and curing disease,
and I think it must be admitted that no town ought
to be without its Hospital for Sick Children.