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maintained at a sufficient height without the air becoming unpleasant
through the number of patients placed within them ;
of course, during warmer weather, when it was not necessary
to keep the doors of the tents closed for the purpose of maintaining
the temperature, there was no room for anxiety on
the score of want of ventilation.
Each tent was carefully trenched, and care taken to prevent
the entrance of wet during storms, and by paying
attention to keeping the two layers of canvas apart from each
other, it was found not difficult even during very heavy rains
to keep the iuterior thoroughly dry.
The disposal of the excreta caused no difficulty, as they were
readily dealt with by means of Moule's earth closets and the dry
earth system, but the enormous amount of slop water from
the laundry and patients' baths gave rise to much anxiety,
for it will be recollected that the fall of the land naturally
caused the drainage to gravitate towards a brook at the bottom
of the field in which the hospital was situated, and that
this brook passed through a public institution in the vicinity,
the managers of which had threatened to apply for an injunction
should any of the slop water enter the brook. This
difficulty was overcome by emptying the water in the first
instance into Field's flushing tanks, from which drain pipes
carried it away to a part of the ground where they ended in a
number of other radiating pipes around the terminal ends of
which the ground was freely broken up. Even with these
precautions it became necessary to dig deep trenches to
receive any overflow that would otherwise have taken place
into the brook owing to the non-absorbent nature of the
ground, but these proved sufficient to overcome the difficulty,
and there was no interruption to the usefulness of the
institution.
The greatest care had to be taken in the management of
the institution, to prevent it being a source of danger to the
district in which it was placed; the attendants were provided
with a special dress which could not therefore be taken out of
the hospital; the patients were removed in the Vestry's
ambulance, and the friends who accompanied them were
brought back in it to their homes, and it was not permitted
to stop anywhere on either journey to or from the hospital;
visiting to patients was restricted to those who were seriously
ill, and the visitors were taken to and from the hospital in the
Vestry's conveyance.
It is satisfactory to be able to report that there is
not the least evidence that the hospital gave rise to a