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76
valescent Hospital, with accommodation for nearly 1,000
patients. In addition to the new hospitals on new sites,
previously existing accommodation has been extended and
improved by the more or less complete reconstruction, with
additions, of most of the older hospitals.
Small-pox Hospital Accommodation.—As regards
accommodation for small-pox, the Managers have not, as yet,
provided anything like the amount recommended by the
Royal Commission in 1882, viz., 2,700 beds. The Hospital
Ships at Long Reach, on the Thames, furnish 300 beds for
acute cases; whilst for mixed cases there is accommodation
for about 1,200 patients at the Gore Farm Hospital, which, at
the present time, is being utilized for scarlet fever convalescents.
The accommodation on this site could be materially
increased, in case of emergency, by the erection of temporary
buildings, as also at the Joyce-green estate, a new site, of some
three hundred acres, which (with considerable additions of
intervening land connecting the estate with the hospital ships)
the Managers have acquired, and on which they propose to
build a permanent hospital for acute cases of small-pox, which,
doubtless, will, in course of time, supersede the hospital
ships.
Summary.—I am indebted to Mr.T.Duncombe Mann, Clerk
to the Metropolitan Asylums Board, for the subjoined statement
of the existing and projected accommodation for various
classes of the infectious sick: it cannot fail to be read with
interest.