589
Lir
Government Civil Hospital
Dated 22nd January 1880.
I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your vote of this morning requesting me to state all my objections to the New Small Pox Hospital in writing.
In reply, I must refer you to my official letter of the 28th of November which I would like to be forwarded with the following observations:
The Small Pox cases at present under treatment are three, one boy and one girl and another case, a man, is to be added to-day.
The attendants now consist of one Colored Wardswoman, two Chinese nurses, one Chinese cook, one European female nurse.
The New Small Pox Hospital provides bed space for six cases in one room, four cases in another and one case in a third. There are little rooms in an outhouse, each capable of containing one Chinese patient.
There is no accommodation whatever for the ward servant in charge, nor for the female nurse, and the cook would have to sleep in the kitchen among his pots and pans. There is no bathroom, which is very desirable in a building designed for the treatment of infectious fevers, and the washing basin provided for the six men patients are in the little rooms with their night-stools. This room, or privy, as it may be called, is built on the North East (the windward) corner, opening into the ward so that the patients will have effluvia from their evacuations constantly present. Moreover, there is no other exit from the ward except through the verandah, so that all the night-stools could have to be carried out through the ward and the servant will be exposed to infection and be also the means of conveying infection outside.
The small ward for two persons has a little offshoot about four feet square apparently meant to contain a night-stool. The night-stool might almost certainly be kept in the room for one person, presumably intended for a female patient, has no privy place provided at all. Water is being laid on and a surface drainage is being made; when these works are finished, the Hospital will be nearer completion.
The third room has no outlet for the washing or other filth on the floor. Filth always quickly becomes offensive and an outlet should be provided with a good fall.
Lastly, though a stout railing surrounds the building, it still wants iron nails on the top; without these, anyone could pass over it without the slightest difficulty.
There is no storage room for provisions, bedding, clothing, utensils, disinfectants, fuel, and coal.
No reference is here made as to the appropriateness of the site...
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