The Express.
London, England, 1855-02-08 00:00:00

FRENCH AND ENGLISH HOSPITALS AT
CONSTANTINOPLE.

(710 It A erzciAL

FT or 1111 DAILY XIWS.
SCUTARI, JAN. 27.

One's comparative estimate of the condition of our
own hospitals at Scutari and that of the French in the
Grand Champs at Pers,will depend very much on what
value the visitor places on externals. A visitor who
attache. much importance to whiteness of bed linen
and blankets, who considers that the inside of an
hospital should smell as sweetly and be as faultlessly
white and clean as the interior of a first clue Devon-
*ire dairy, will be disposed to find fault with the
'audition of our own establishments, and place thou
of oar allies above all praise. On the other hand, an
individual whose less exquisite taste will be satisfied
with unbleached linen and grey blankets, with un-
visited bedsteads and " whitey brown* walls, will
Meet with little or nothing to find weighty
bad with in either of our two hospitals
Yin. To the eye they certainly present a lees
umfortable and perfect picture than is to be seen in
Me French buildings on the other side of the Bee-
=N; but in all the requisites of assiduous mitten-
eed substantial comforts, I am very much
to place our own establishments on a level
the average of the nine hospitals in the posses-
aka of our allies. The surface inferiority of the
sasommodation and hospital furniture is, I admit,
adliciently striking to afford materiel for an itnagi-1
native grumbler to work up into a very declamatory
attack upon the short-comings and mismanagement
of our own hospital officials; but when not effect, but
the conveyance to the public mind at home of really
true ideas of the condition and treatment
of our wounded soldiers is the object in
view, the result, though it may reed less slashingly,
will, I apprehend, be doing more jostles both to the
'abbe and to the officials upon whose skill and
libation the comfort and lives of so many of our
have fellows depend. Much has been mid and
written about the great inferiority of our own hospi-
tal establishment' to those of the French, and I
admit that some weeks ago there was more or less
ground for the unflattering comparison; but the
splendid reecho which have followed from the labours
of Miss Nightingale and her ladies, have raised
Scutari to a degree of excellence which, at the pre-
sent moment, so far as the internal management of
the hospital and the treatment of its inmates go,
leaves little to complain of, and not much to be
ashamed of, in comparison with the French.
On Thursday last I spent several hours in the
Wei* of the Urger hospital here, and yesterday I
Slab • visit of nearly similar length to the largest
of the French hospitals—the Mejidish, in Pero;
will now give you a brief comparative deiscrip-
lieu 01 both. The larger of the two buildings now
mad as baqpitals on this aide of the water is the
etCrlpile of buildings which served as bar-
ely 18,000 of our own troops before the
army moved up to Varna. It has been so often de-
scribed, pictorially and otherwise, that I need say
nothing more of it than that for solidity of structure,
convenience of arrangement, and respectability of
architecture, it would do credit either to Paris or
London. Within the walls of this building, then,
and of the smaller adjoining hospital, nearly five
thousand sick and wounded are now congregated.
Tarot tiers of corridors run round the whole extent
of the quadrangle, and from these, which are covered
and roofed in equally with the other com-
partments of the building, branch off the
apartments proper. These last bad bean long
ago filled with the mutilated heroes of the
Alma, Balaklava, and Inkermann, and the corridors
were then partitioned off into compartments and
fitted up for the reception of the continually arriving
shiploads of sick. These last have in their tun
become filled to overflowing, and temporary woodeal
buildings are now in course of erection in the vast
square outside for the accommodation of the hun-
dred' whom every week is pouring in. The " make