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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 utilised for about 750 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. Duncombe Mann, the
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.