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85
Joyce Green Estate.—On this site of some three
hundred acres, which (with considerable additions of intervening
land connecting the estate with the hospital ships) the
Managers have acquired, they are about to build a hospital for
400 patients, at a cost of £220,000.
It thus appears that the Metropolis is endowed, in possession
or in early prospect, with accommodation for at least
of 6,000 patients suffering from fever and diphtheria, a number
precisely double that recommended by the Royal Commission,
irrespective of many hundred beds at Gore Farm,
generally available for convalescent cases in the abeyance of
small-pox. Time only can determine whether this provision
will suffice for the requirements of the metropolis. For smallpox
patients the accommodation is, or will be, to the extent
of some 1,900 beds: a number, I repeat, considerably below
the recommendation of the Royal Commission (2,700), but
which I am sanguine enough to hope will suffice, seeing how
much more effectually this disease has been controlled since
the practice was adopted of removing the sick out of London
for isolation and treatment, initiated, upon my advice, in May,
1881, and subsequently perfected by the Managers, who, since
1884, have ceased to use the town hospitals for small-pox,
removing, direct from their homes, to the ships all patients
suffering from this disease—with what beneficent results let
the statistics of mortality set out at page 29 testify.
"Deficiency of Hospital Accommodation." Under
this heading I have had occasion in several previous reports
to deplore the unavoidable necessity of keeping at home, for
considerable periods in many cases, numerous patients who
could not be admitted to the hospitals owing to want of
accommodation. I am pleased to be able to report that no
difficulty of this kind was experienced during the past year.