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9
Paris) Department, etc., and all the necessary provision for re-education of the
wounded soldier after leaving the surgeon's hands.
After closing for the reception of military cases in the Main Hospital, there
is still an arrangement with the Admiralty, War Office, and the Air Force for
treating Service men in emergency conditions. Additionally, the Ministry of
Pensions for a large area in the North of London and even for Districts outside,
is utilizing the Hospital for surgical treatment of pensioners, and for the restoration
of the broken ex-service civilian to full industrial capacity.
The work performed during the war has had a great effect on the
psychological question of hospital treatment, that is to say, many thousands of
visitors who came to help the soldiers have subsequently returned for treatment
in the wards, having seen through the war the effect of hospital treatment, and
having thus got rid of the long standing prejudice in most minds as to what is
actually done in a hospital. Prior to 1914 the ordinary man in the street had
a rooted adversion to hospital treatment, but having learnt from the experience
of his relatives the nature of the care which is bestowed on the suffering sick,
he has come to appreciate the value in serious illness, and in fact the actual
necessity, of being nursed and treated with the help of modern appliances and
modern methods, which could not be adapted in a private house, except in
slight illness.
Apart from the scheme of pensioners, the furnishing of the special
departments for physical therapeutics will remain for the treatment of the
general population, and it is hoped thus that sick infirm and deformed children
and adults may be restored to health by teams of doctors and nurses engaged
on a more extended curative treatment than has previously been possible by
operative measures.
Every encouragement in scientific advance has been given by the Hospital
Committee, and in the future the usefulness of such a large Unit with an enormous
turnover of patients should daily improve for the benefit of the public. The
position of the Hospital is rather unique, inasmuch as emergency and urgent
surgical cases which cannot be received in the regular General Hospitals between
here and North of the Thames, are being received into the North Middlesex
Hospital owing to the small number of beds and shortage in these General
Hospitals, and an increasing number of these patients are being dealt with
who cannot elsewhere receive treatment.
A great advance is being made in the Special Maternity Department for
Council cases, and this is recognised as a Training School for maternity work
in North London and the Central Midwives Board have requested that all